The Curious Case of Rei Ikari

[Tranquil Zebra]

"Curse of Eva"

Technically speaking, Rei Ikari's current body is about 8 months old

Click to shrink...

Well, you're only as old as you feel, they say. It does mean all the other cast members are older now, still. Personally, I wouldn't mind a body-reset, or an upgrade to an objectively superior model, but I suspect the price was a little too high for Rei. People also tend to get irrationally attached to their bodies, but on the plus side; ready made cosplay/costume any time of the day

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 38:
Outside Context Pilot​

I loved Thai food. A nice chicken pad Thai with just the right amount of heat was probably my favorite thing to eat. This dish was no different. The hot chili mingled with the crushed peanut and noodle in a way that sang to me.

Across the table from me I saw 'Suzu' somehow managing to make the way she was hoovering down her vegetarian pad Thai look dignified and graceful. She'd always had that quality about her, or maybe I had just been looking at her through rose tinted glasses.

Rose tinted irises at least.

"So, Su," I started around a mouthful of noodle. "I'm happy to see you, but you're not dressed like this is just a social call. You know?"

Suzu glanced over at Rae and tilted her head slightly towards her. "Nihongo wa dekimasu ka?"

Rae cocked an eyebrow at my sister and there was a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Hai, dekimasu."

I snorted and shook my head, "Is it really polite to try to find a language she doesn't understand to speak in front of her?"

"It could be one of those things people shouldn't know about, Rei," my sister said to me with raised eyebrows and a 'you ought not push this issue' expression on her face.

"So it's one of those things. So not just a social call?" I accused. I couldn't say I was unhappy to see her, it was quite the opposite in fact, but I would have liked it to have at least been just for me.

"It can be both," she admitted, or maybe asked. I couldn't imagine she'd want to have to ask me for something.

"You know," Rae interrupted, "Suzu's accent is a lot stronger than yours. That's a little strange now that I think about it."

I felt my hand clench under the table and then forced myself to relax it. "Oh, that's simple, we spent about fifteen years apart from each other, I'm far more Americanized than she is."

The best lies were ones based in the truth.

"Is that the lie you're going with?" Rae asked. She was sharp, smarter than I or Victoria ever were, so maybe trying to pull one over on her wasn't the best bet.

Suzu put her chopsticks down and gestured towards Rae, her eyes narrowed. "Zasluzhivayushchiy doveriya?"

"Da, viktoriya doveryayet yey." I answered with my crude understanding of the Russian language.

Rae started to glare at me and I slumped my shoulders forward with a sigh, "It's a long and complicated story. I'll try to cut out the irrelevant details." But where to start?

"I don't really have a dog in this fight, if you need to keep secrets you're certainly entitled to it. I have a few of my own. I'm just..." Rae trailed off, I could see her eyes watering up. "I've just had questions since you did show up with a woman who looks like she could be my wife's aged twin."

Alright, fair enough then. I knew where to start. "I was in New Orleans eight months ago."

xxx

Eight Months Ago​

The portal passed by and a moment later I found myself staring at the clear blue sky, altimeter climbing rapidly. Had it not worked? I looked to the left and saw clear blue water as far as the eye could see. To my right the green of land, with a small inlet breaking it up before going further inland.

I recognized the landmass, I'd seen it from the air enough. I could spot the causeway that bisected Lake Pontchartrain. We'd popped out over New Orleans, on a world that had never had the oceans turned red.

"I think we're home."

"What?" She asked in a confused tone. Of course she wouldn't understand, but I did.

This was a world untouched by the Angels, this was the world that Shinji had wanted. This was where my memories had come from, or close enough to it.

Wait.

The radar warning receiver screeched in my ear and I shoved the throttle to the stop and dumped an entire chaff bucket. I rolled the stick forward and put us into a sharp dive while rolling to the right. I hadn't yet confirmed a missile launch, but I didn't want to take the chance.

"Sis, get someone on the radio, figure out what's going on!" I yelled as I shed thousands of feet in a matter of seconds.

Down and below I could spot a small group of aircraft carriers being flanked on six sides by Iowa class battleships, and each of those was chugging out a steady stream of cannon-fire in the direction of another group of vessels, but not actually hitting any of them.

That would be the WILLE fleet, because the USN wasn't driving Iowas anymore, and they'd never had six of them anyway. The carriers were deep in the center of the formation, with the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers filling in around the edge. Most of the people were either on the carriers or the Wunder.

"No answer on normal frequencies, there's a lot of overlapping communication. Nobody is hearing us over the noise."

The RWR stopped screeching in my ear when we dropped under two thousand fee, so I pulled the throttle back down to half, with the WILLE fleet between us and the USN. I didn't need the radar to see all of the aircraft in the sky, but there was enough triple-A to keep them away from the fleet proper. I couldn't afford to engage them in combat because without radio I had no way of knowing who was on what side, since they were all flying the same damn aircraft.

Not that I had much more than the two heaters and two AMRAAMs on my wings. I started to thumb through the stores inventory when I rolled through and found no autocannon. Instead I found a selection for, the way I interpreted the readout, some kind of hyper-velocity gun with a fifty round capacity.

My guess was something similar to what had been hanging from the wings on the strike eagle.

"Alright, if they can't hear us over the noise, we'll just have to be louder. Power on the IFF transponder and fire up the active radar in continuous mode."

A moment later the radar screen started displaying much more accurate real time targeting information, no longer relying on passive reception. More importantly, we were visible as hell to anyone with the wherewithal to look.

I rolled the radio over to a frequency I remembered from long ago, one that the computer on his jet still had the cipher for. "Cylon One-Three in the blind, anyone got their ears on? I'm the idiot blasting my transponder for everyone to see."

"Cylon One-Two copies. I didn't think we'd see you again. We're covering the retreat but it's rough, their machines are a hell of a lot newer. And we're trying really hard not to actually kill anyone." He sounded old, worn out. I guess it had been fifteen years for him. It had been six days for me.

"I'll give them something else to worry about. I'm going after the 'Burkes. Are you able to cover me?" I called back as I rolled the weapon selector over to the HV railgun. I heard a clunk noise and looked over my left shoulder to see a panel had retracted, exposing the muzzle of the gun.

"Why the hell not. Cylon One-Two descending now. I'll cover you."

I angled the nose towards the fleet on the opposite side of the carriers and pushed the throttle back up. The speed piled on quickly, much faster than before the retrofit, much faster than anything I'd ever flown before. I kept the plane low, under two hundred feet for the majority of the run-up.

The RWR started to screech again so I set the countermeasures to automatic. The plane started ejecting flare and chaff from the forward buckets as the distance closed under a kilometer.

The IR targeting system lit up hot-spots on the lead 'Burke's hull, directly under the intake/exhaust superstructure at the waterline. I squeezed off a shot and stepped into the rudder to fire a second shot at the hot spot aft of that one; both main engine rooms.

A pair of blasts erupted from the ship's armor as the shots drilled through the plate and, presumably, out the other side. I stepped into the rudder as a shot flew overhead and tore the sensor mast completely off the ship I'd just shot.

I chopped throttle and rolled to the right, hauled back on the stick and bled much of my energy into a nine-G full performance turn back towards the WILLE fleet.

I looked up in the mirror and saw smoke pouring out of the destroyer's stacks, the angle meant that I'd have hit at least one engine in each room, and if the shell cleared the other side it would be taking on water.

She wasn't moving any time soon.

Ahead of and below me I saw a pink Evangelion standing on the left wing of the Wunder, which I had only seen for the first time in this fight. The water trailing off of it told me exactly where it had been.

The pink Eva was holding an Eva-scale sniper rifle and fired another round over me, probably knocking the comms mast off another one of the ships. Making them deaf and dumb was a good way of reducing their effectiveness, and preventing too much intel from leaking out.

"Looks like they're pulling back to let us retreat. Set down on the Kitty Hawk. You've got a few people who want to talk to you."

"Negative Cylon One-Two. Handcuffs aren't my kind of Jewlery. I'll have to catch you guys on the flip side."

xxx​

"I'm not sure that this is a better lie," Rae mused. "But supposing I believe you, why are you living here instead of with the rest of the people in the WILLE fleet?"

'Suzu' laughed at an unspoken joke and shook her head. "We were trying to keep her out of trouble."

I nodded, "So, I stashed the fighter jet, and we came back to face the music together. She got put to work, I got put on a bus."

Rae nodded and then rested her chin on her hand, "So why didn't we hear about flying battleships or giant robots on the news?"

I shrugged, "Human capacity for denial. Who'd believe it? I mean, there's an Arleigh Burke with holes in it that can't be denied, anyone with eyes could have seen the hundreds of tons of high explosive that got chunked around in the gulf, but those are things we understand."

"Evangelion and Wunder strain the human imagination." Suzu continued for me. "The ships were witnessed. Their origin can be denied, but they can be seen so their existence cannot be denied."

"Wait, what do you mean by 'Evangelion'? You can't possibly mean what I think you're trying to say. You're definitely off your meds, been watching too much TV or something." Rae accused with a slightly uncomfortable-sounding laugh.

"Well, you know I buy a lot of hair dye." I offered with a shrug.

"And? So you've got some gray hair, that's not that uncommon to gray a little early."

I shrugged, "Fair enough." I looked down into my lap and held my eyelid open and plucked the brown contact lens off of my right eye and blinked away the sudden tears from the irritation.

I looked up at her with my right eye still closed. "Well, that's only half of it. Victoria's cousin thought you might be a target if anyone figured out who she was, and who she's working with. I needed a place to have a normal life, and she wanted assurances that someone would be watching after you."

"Even if I believed that, you're about ninety pounds soaking wet. You're no bigger than I am so what could you do?" Rae accused. She was getting angrier, both from confusion and distrust, but...

I set the contact lens down on the table and opened my right eye, showing my blood red iris for all to see. "I have a few talents that go beyond that. I don't need a fighter jet to be dangerous."

"So you're an albino? That doesn't prove anything. You know what? Fuck it. I'm going to bed. I've got work tomorrow, you have work tomorrow, and I'm done entertaining this weird shit." Rae said before storming off to her room.

"That could have gone better." My sister admitted to me, then stood up from the table. "Although this was somewhat of a distraction from what I came here for originally. I do need your help, and I apologize for asking."

"If you want the F-2, you can't have it." I said and shook my head, "I've told them that a dozen times. It's not going to happen."

"I'm not here on their behalf, I am here on behalf of our sister. Officially WILLE can't support what I want to do. So I need your help.

I stared at her un-blinkingly for a few moments and then laughed, "Oh, you need my other parting gift don't you? What's the mission?"

"She found Nagisa." Suzu offered simply.

I felt my left hand locking into a fist, and then I forced it open again. "Rescue mission?"

"Yes."

I nodded without hesitation. He might have been creepy, but he'd tried, and without him we wouldn't have made it here. He was one of us, we owed him. "I'm in. Whatever you need."

I heard a door down the hall pop open and footsteps down the hardwood floor towards us. Rae stepped out and turned to look at me. Her face was tight, her eyes half open as she took a deep breath. "You know, I just made a phone call because I figured, hey, you're crazy, but there's a chance you're not. Victoria used to work with someone from the Kitty Hawk. The one from here. He said that somebody did try to sink the Farragut in New Orleans. Exactly the way you described it."

"So..." I ventured. "Is that better or worse?"

"I haven't decided yet. But if you're not lying about that, I tend to believe the rest of what you said, at least a little bit. When you're done doing whatever it is you have planned, I need you to take me to WILLE. I need to talk to the woman who brought you to me." Rae demanded as her expression shifted one that that was a little closer to 'fierce' than I felt entirely comfortable with.

Suzu looked between Rae and I a few times and then shrugged. "That can be arranged. Our mission will not be actionable for several more days, after the mission we can revisit this request, though I see no reason why I cannot accommodate you."

I turned away from the table and shook my head. I was all pumped and ready to go and with that she knocked the wind right out of my sails. "Well, that's great. Back to the daily grind tomorrow then. The couch pulls out into a bed, knock yourself out. I'm going to sleep."

"What, you're going to sleep after all that?" Rae demanded from behind me as I walked down the hall.

"Yeah, why not? This is a three out of ten on my weird shit-o-meter. I don't start losing sleep till my actions have theological implications." I waved my hand over my shoulder and pulled my door closed behind me.

The bed sure looked nice and comfy after all.

 

[Sunshine Temple]

Chapter 37

" Rae was also a nerd. Anime, television, literature, it didn't matter. There was something surreal about seeing a glass display case with a six inch tall vinyl statue of Rei Ayanami standing inside of it, especially once you'd met the real person."

Hah!


Chapter 38


""
"Evangelion and Wunder strain the human imagination." Suzu continued for me. "The ships were witnessed. Their origin can be denied, but they can be seen so their existence cannot be denied."
""

Hehehe

Interesting new angle.

Really curious to see where you go with this new book.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 39:
Menace​

I stared at the handset sitting against the pillar in front of me, straddled right between the two parts lookup terminals with a deep primal hatred pulled from within the darkest recesses of my mind. I could almost taste ozone on the air as I directed every bit of my energy into willing an energy beam into reality that might smite the damned thing, that I may never use it again.

"Raphi!" I yelled with a level of hatred in my voice that I had reserved for one, and only one customer. Only one autonomous pile of human mayonnaise could earn this feeling, this ire. "Raphi that son of a bitch got me again!"

On the counter in front of me lay parts. Parts from the stacks behind the counter. Parts from every single aisle of the stacks, all for one single car, but from all corners of inventory. I'd been up and down a ladder eight times pulling them all. Eight times.

This, in and of itself, wasn't a big deal, it was a sale, and a sale was a sale. But this bastard, this human mayonnaise would do this to me every month. Call in with his generic sounding voice, order a bunch of parts, have me pull all of them, then say 'oh, never mind, I don't need them after all' and then hang up.

So then I had thirty suspension parts for a short-bed Chevy sitting on the counter that I had to restock, which meant I had to punch them all back in and get rack locations. Easily forty five minutes of fucking around, and that's if no other customers bothered me.

I heard the man come around the corner, of course he could do little to hide his movements. He wasn't exactly limber, advanced in age as he was. "Rei? What do you--" He interrupted himself when he saw the stack of Moog, Felpro, and Timkin boxes. "Oh dammit, again? Rei that's twice this week."

I clenched my left fist so hard my wrist cracked and then relaxed it out again. "You know Raphi, you've got a point. I think I let him do this so I can get my daily exercise, gotta keep the flab off somehow, right?"

"No, Rei..." He sighed and shook his head. "It's probably a pissed off secret shopper. Just push this all on the return carts and I'll get overnight to restock it all. Don't waste your whole shift on it."

Never let it be said that I missed an opportunity to pass the buck or make shit roll uphill.

"Yeah, let Chris do it. I don't wanna. That's fine." I shook my head and walked out into the main area of the store in front of the aisles, to the oil change display. The sale was still on, and I still didn't care.

The loud raspy exhaust note from the parking lot drew my attention as if it were a gunshot. My head snapped to the left and, through the glass along the front of the store, I saw a violently red Porsche 911 tearing it's way up the parking lot. Low gear, high throttle. Showing off, obviously.

Obviously.

I shook my head and walked over to the specialty oils shelf. Mostly cleaners, conditioners, gallon cans of WD-40, stuff like that. I was responsible for making sure that they were front facing and not all knocked all over the place. It was a job I took very little pride in. Fortunately, it took very little pride to accomplish.

I heard the red Porsche shut down outside of the entrance to the store and wandered back towards the parts shelves. Whoever was driving that car was probably an asshole and I didn't want to deal with any assholes.

I slipped around the corner behind the registers and camped out behind the plug-wire shelf. The area doubles as a break room, with a mini fridge, microwave, and the store's safe. In violation of corporate policy, the door was unlocked and open because it was easier to unlock it just once per shift. Situation normal.

A sealed bottle of coke sat on top of the safe and I licked my bottom lip unconsciously. I'd stashed it there earlier, out of the cooler out front, for emergency use. That is, for any thirst emergency. I cracked the bottle open and started to slurp the liquid down. I needed the caffeine anyway.

The chime from the door alarm told me that 'the asshole with the Porsche' had entered the building. Or maybe it was somebody else. I supposed that it didn't matter since Raphi wasn't about to work the cash register unless I was bleeding to death, and of course he'd ring the customer up before calling the ambulance. Just good business sense.

I sighed and pulled a stick of gum out of my pocket and popped it into my mouth. Tasted like Fireball. If only the taste came with the effectiveness of the drink. The substitute would have to do; drinking at work pissed Raphi off.

The repetitive ringing of the bell at the cash register filled me with a sudden impulse to shove it into the bodily orifice of whoever was hitting the damn thing, and I didn't really have a preference for which one.

I shuffled back into the customer-facing half of the store while staring at the floor. More of a trudge than a shuffle, but I got where I was going. A pack of air 'vanillaroma' air fresheners was sitting on the counter next to a five dollar bill.

The package rang up at an even four-fifty, and I looked up to give the customer their change.

"Ikari, you look like shit and you smell like Fireball."

I recognized that voice. I blinked and looked up at the woman I was handing the money to. Well of fucking course it would be her. "Nice to see you too Asuka. It's cinnamon gum by the way."

She shrugged at me and took her change. "Could have gone either way with you. You did have that drinking problem."

I shrugged, "No problem, I get it all in my mouth now. No spills. You come all this way for air fresheners?"

She gave a non-committal shrug and head tilt, "Could be. Didn't know you were into that kind of thing. Keeping busy huh?"

I shook my head and laughed. "Nothing like that. Romance has been dead since that brief interruption in being alive eight months ago. Other than that, you know, alcohol, work. The usual stuff."

She put the air fresheners in her purse and seemed to be studying me. Even through her sunglasses I could tell her eye hadn't changed since I'd last seen her, on Akagi's table. It did seem to be working just fine though. "So you can still get drunk?" She asked finally.

"Yep. Should I not be able to?" I asked. I felt my eyebrow creeping up under the tips of my bangs. Could she not? Interesting side effect of Angelic contamination. Maybe that was the difference between Lilith and Adam.

"I can't. Mari's hard enough to deal with, and I can't even drink to make it stop." She deadpanned. A moment later her lip curled up into a smirk.

I rolled my head and felt my neck pop, and it felt damn good. "So how are things going in the fleet?"

Her expression fell and she looked toward the front door of the store. "Well, Misato got wind of what's going on with you and Ayanami. She's sent me to warn you away from doing anything... mercenary."

"Oh is that all?" I prodded. She should have known me better than that. Did she think sending the girl I'd killed the world to save would sway me? "Our agreement is at my pleasure. I'm not going to leave him hanging in the wind after what he did for me. After what he did for all of us. This life is because of him, you know."

She nodded and took her sunglasses off. I could see her Angelic eye clearly now, and I figured that was the point. "I'm just the messenger. If you cause an incident with the Americans she's going to send me after you. Off the record though, I don't think I'll find you."

Dammit Misato, it wasn't enough to send me away? If you want to control my life you've got to be part of it. I spit my gum into the trash can. "We'll have to catch up some other time, I'd like to spend more time with you, but after work." I hesitated, then narrowed my eyes. "Wunder works because Misato has my mother locked in a cage. Ask her who she thinks Unit One will side with if I come calling."

"You really think that's the best play here, Rei? She's got a fleet, you have you. Is that a fight you think you're gonna win?"

I felt my hand clenching into a fist again. "Maybe, maybe not. Tell her if she wants to run my life she needs to actually be part of my life. If she's going to push me away I'll be away, but it'll be on my terms."

She laughed and shook her head at me. "Looks like that fire in your heart is still lit. I left a present for you in your car. I think you'll find it useful for... well, you'll see. I'll deny it so don't go telling anyone I gave it to you."

She started towards the door, keys in her hand. Part of me wanted to chase her, jump in the car with her, and wherever she went just tag along. Make it like the old days again. Get in a fight with a giant monster, sleep in Misato's apartment.

"Leaving so soon?" I asked suddenly, and perhaps a bit too urgently. I didn't want to be alone. Suddenly it felt as if everything that Victoria had given me had been stripped away and I was that scared lonely little girl standing on a deserted street waiting to get picked up by that cute woman in the picture that had been sent along with the letter.

The ones you let yourself love can cut you deeper than anyone else and Misato had cut me to the core. Those feelings were just under the surface, always waiting to erupt, to bubble up and turn me into a wreck. I kept them pushed down under a layer of alcohol and sarcasm but at times like this, times when I was reminded, when I had to think about her.

"I've got to get back to the fleet. I'm needed." She said simply. Her tone, more than her words, told me that I couldn't push the issue if I wanted to.

"If you ever need me, I'll be there." I choked out. "Can you tell her that for me?"

She put her sunglasses back on and nodded, "Yeah, I think so."

I didn't bother watching when I heard the door open and close again. I took a step back from the register and leaned against the shelf behind me. If I wasn't such a fuck up, she'd have kept me around.

If I wasn't such a fuck up we wouldn't be living in a healthy world, so maybe I wasn't completely wrong.

Don't... do anything too mercenary?

That's the word she'd chosen.

Mercenary.

"Hey Raphi!" I yelled to the back of the store where he was surely hiding from customers. "Hey Raphi, call in Chris. I gotta run."

 

[Sunshine Temple]

Chapter 39


""
"Ikari, you look like shit and you smell like Fireball."

I recognized that voice. I blinked and looked up at the woman I was handing the money to. Well of fucking course it would be her. "Nice to see you too Asuka. It's cinnamon gum by the way."
""

Heh, of /course/ she'd drive a car like that.

""
Don't... do anything too mercenary?

That's the word she'd chosen.

Mercenary.
""

Heheh.

Interesting seeing how this new world unfolds.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 40:
Plans in Motion​

The thing most people didn't understand about arms dealing was that it wasn't really the kind of thing that happened in dark alleys with large sums of cash and six different armed men standing lookout. Most of the time it happened from a smart phone or from a computer keyboard. Social media and web forums were the easiest and most common way of setting up meetings.

And it was all perfectly legal and above board.

Hollywood had this way of giving most people the impression that buying guns out of the trunk of a car for cash was the realm of murderers or vigilantes, rather than an astonishingly common occurrence every day in rural America.

The best way to run procurement for our little adventure would be completely above board, at least for as much of it as we could. Suzu had given me some stuff that I could barter with, something that nobody else in the civilian world had anyway.

It was amazing what people were willing to pay for cans of Mk 211 Mod 0. In terms of small arms, four or five cans would cover basically all of our needs. I'd have to turn a little more of it into cash for fuel, and then make sure I had enough left to actually use, but it wouldn't be too much of a problem to do that. Worst came to worst I could add ball into the belts to make up for the missing 211.

I pushed myself back away from the keyboard so I could stand up. I'd set up a deal for later in the day, not too far away either so that was a bonus. In the meantime, a bottle of hair dye demanded my attention and would not be denied.

My spine cracked as I stretched out upon standing. A quick keystroke locked the screen and I grabbed the plastic bag off the corner of the desk. I was fortunate enough to have a bathroom attached to my bedroom; it would serve my purposes just fine.

Little blue hair girl was making a comeback.

xxx​

I had never been a fan of pants but the weather required it. Victoria had never had an aversion to such garments, but as was more apparent with every day of my life: we were not the same person. Just as well, my feelings for Misato didn't make me feel guilty about Rae; I just didn't think of her like that. Not anymore, anyway.

It was funny, when I finally met her and the spark I was expecting just wasn't there. It was for the best.

The reason I needed pants was the forty degree temperatures made my bones cold. The Corvair didn't have heating, but it provided some shelter from the cold. Standing around in the middle of a parking lot waiting for the guy to show up didn't afford the same insulation.

Having three hundred-twenty round cases of Raufoss Mk 211 sitting in the front of my car made me feel a bit like a guard next to a broken down armored car. Of course, my saving grace was that even if somebody did pry the trunk lid open they wouldn't know how valuable that ammo actually was.

I caught myself cracking my knuckles and shook my hands to get the blood flowing. After spending my entire life in a world where the mercury rarely dropped under eighty, this was almost like a frozen hell. It wasn't even the coldest it was going to get either.

After the small eternity of fifteen minutes a three-quarter ton Ford came rolling up to my car. Having a distinctive vehicle always made these deals easier to work out, you were easier to pick out. It also meant you could develop a reputation as a reliable trader as well. 'Oh, the girl with the Corvair? Yeah she's alright.'

I'd left my contacts at home, and with my hair back to it's 'original' cornflower blue I would definitely stand out, but that was the point. I wanted the attention.

"Wow! That's a hell of a hair color you got there kid!"

I laughed and looked over at the now-stopped truck and the man climbing down out of it. "Yeah I suppose it is! So, you're Cotton, right? Rei Ikari." I said, extending my hand towards him as he approached.

"Nice to metcha. So, you've actually got some of that Raufoss huh? I gotta admit I half expected this to be a prank, but I need some for my collection so I figured I'd give it a chance." He was an older guy, probably mid to late fifties, jovial enough though. His handshake was firm without being aggressive and accent made me think of an old-school country boy who tripped and fell into a college education by accident.

I nodded, "Yeah, it's a bit hard to come by, but if you're a collector then you're going to love the seals on the cans. Check it out." I said as I popped the release and lifted the trunk lid on the front of the car. The three cans of Mk 211 sat, held in place by the telescoping brace I'd stuck behind them to keep them from rolling around.

"Willy?" He sounded out. Close enough to WILLE I supposed. "Those are the guys from that big knock down drag out in New Orleans, right? Where the hell did you get this stuff?" He asked as he leaned in to inspect the merchandise. "You know what, never mind. I know we made a deal for two cans, but I'll throw in the M95 and the glass I got on it if you give me all three."

That would be two fifty caliber rifles. I only needed one, but two was definitely better, and I had enough ammo to justify the trade. "Cotton, you got yourself a deal."

I reached down into the trunk and released the brace, then grabbed a can in each hand and hefted them out. It would have been a problem for me before, but red eyes and AT fields weren't the only benefit to my new biology.

"Hell kid, you're stronger than you look. I coulda got them. Aw oh well. Let me grab the rifles and you can have a look at em." He said with a laugh and a shake of his head. I kinda liked this guy.

I followed him back to his truck and set the two cans down in the bed while he fetched two hard cases from his back seat. We met back at the front of my car where he pulled the third can out and laid both cases down and popped them open.

On the left was a real beauty of a rifle, a Barret M82A3 .50BMG rifle. That's what I'd been after, because being able to drill a hole through an engine block with enough punch left to take out a horse could always be useful.

On the right, a M95 .50BMG rifle. The bolt action counterpart to the semi automatic M82. It wasn't what I had originally bargained for, but two was always better than one. I was sure we'd find a use for it. The glass sitting on top of it looked like it cost more than my car.

I turned to Cotton and stuck my hand out. "Looks good to me, you happy with the deal?"

He took my hand and shook it, a little more animatedly than before. "Yes Ma'am. Tell you what, if you get any more of that you wanna get rid of let me know first. I'll make you a real good deal."

"Sure thing, might have some more in a week or two, I'll let you know how it goes." I said as he turned to walk back to his truck, when a thought hit me. "Say, Cotton, what do you do for a living?"

I was curious about his demeanor, accent, apparent wealth. I wanted to know what a man like that did for a living.

"Oh, mechanical engineer. How about yourself?"

I tilted my head and thought about it for a minute, then let the smile creep onto my face. "Fighter pilot."

Cotton nodded his head and then his mouth worked up and down a couple of times as he tried to think of how to say what he was going to say next. "Pardon my askin, but, for who?"

I shrugged, "For me."

"Well I guess that's fair enough." He said with a shrug and pulled the door of his truck closed.

I closed the rifle cases and then the trunk lid and climbed back into my own car. On the passenger seat was the package that Asuka had given me the other day. I'd opened it before, but I'd left it in the car. I wasn't quite sure what she'd meant by it, but I chose to believe it was something good.

Leather jacket and a pilot's cap and goggles. Either she was telling me she knew what I was going to do, or she was telling me she knew what I was going to do and supported my doing it. Maybe she felt like she owed me something, but I felt more like I owed her. She'd given me a reason for everything.

I pushed in the clutch and turned the key and the still-warm engine purred to life. Cotton's truck had already pulled away by the time I slid into first gear and eased the clutch out. Off to the airfield to see what luck Suzu had with her own procurement efforts.

xxx​

The airstrip was a simple affair, a grass strip with a few tie-downs alone the perimeter and no control tower. Exactly what I needed it to be. I could see another car sitting down at the far end by a plane sitting under a tarp.

It might have been unusual to keep a plane under a tarp, especially that one, but if anyone who knew what they were looking at saw the propellers they would have more questions than I'd be able to answer.

The best case was that they assumed I was with the same group that had six Iowa-class battleships when only four had ever been built. They wouldn't be entirely wrong.

I drove down the dirt access road towards that final aircraft in the row and pulled up alongside the other car, and then turned off the engine. The tink-tink sound of the manifolds cooling was actually somewhat calming for me. I reached down to pop the trunk and then opened the door.

Suzu was already on her way over as I walked around the front of the car to lift the trunk lid. She noticed my hair color, at least I assumed that's why she was shaking her head and giving me that look while I pulled the cases out.

"I see you're back to old habits, Ikari." She chided me as she took the first case from me. "Given up on the contact lenses as well?"

I shrugged and hefted the second case up on top of my shoulder and closed the trunk lid with my other hand. "I talked to Asuka the other day. She said Misato didn't want me to act too mercenary. I figured that might get her attention, so I didn't want there to be any confusion as to my choice."

"Back to old habits? The Americans aren't going to like this." She reminded me with a tilted head and a knowing tone of voice.

"This feels more right anyway. The contacts were getting itchy and Rei Ikari was always meant to have blue hair. I'm certain of it." I answered with a laugh, then set the case down on the trunk lid.

"There are two cases, I only asked for one rifle." Suzu observed.

I popped the catch and opened the case still on the trunk lid, the M95 with scope lay out on the soft packing foam. "He threw in a second rifle for a third can of 211, I figured we'd either find a use for it or sell it for cash. You guys are doing the ground portion of this mission so it's up to you what you do with it."

"Unit Zero had a weapon very similar to this. I am sure I will find a use for it." She reached out and touched the bolt handle of the weapon and nodded her head. "Yes, this will do."

"So, how was your end of procurement?" I probed and jerked my head towards the other car.

She looked up from the case and then looked back to the car, and then to me, and the hint of a smile graced her lips. "You spoke to Shikinami, I spoke to Makinami."

 

[Sunshine Temple]

Chapter 40


""
On the right, a M95 .50BMG rifle. The bolt action counterpart to the semi automatic M82. It wasn't what I had originally bargained for, but two was always better than one. I was sure we'd find a use for it. The glass sitting on top of it looked like it cost more than my car.
""

Which isn't unreasonable... depending on the scope, depending on the car...


""
I was curious about his demeanor, accent, apparent wealth. I wanted to know what a man like that did for a living.

"Oh, mechanical engineer. How about yourself?"
""

Heh. Yeah older engineers tend to have the mix of mentality and disposable income.
(To be fair there's also doctors and attorneys and anyone else that saves up.... but having enough 50 bmg rifles that selling two is a "why not", is telling)

Neat chapter, as always interested to see where this goes.

 

[Jackie]

The Curious Case of Rei Ikari: Common Threads
Part Three:
The Sniper​

"You backed her up then, I'm asking you to do the same thing now."

I spit my gum out. The flavor had worn off anyway so it was just as well. "Yes, that's true. But you know why I did that." She was close enough to the situation, and always had been. I might have known more about Ayanami's origins than she did.

I was there for it, after all.

"I do not have to tell you how bad it would be if the Americans were able to discover what Nagisa is. This is what is at stake." Ayanami was wearing brown contact lenses, and had her hair dyed. I didn't really like it. It looked too much like--

"You're asking me to turn on WILLE. You're asking me to go AWOL at least. So why?" I asked. She had already left the fleet once on this errand, now she was back to try to draw me into it? And she'd do it looking like that.

Even if I did help her, that was no guarantee of success. We had failed more than we'd succeeded, but we'd always won when it counted. Which category did Ayanami's little operation fall into?

Ayanami... Ayanami had changed since fourth impact. She seemed more driven, but more reckless. I had noticed what she'd stolen from the armory on the Kitty Hawk, if anyone else had noticed she would have been in a world of trouble.

But then Katsuragi had let her take one of the civilian aircraft for her own personal use. I could not quite figure out what relationship there was between Ayanami and the Marshal. Whatever it was dated back to Nerv, and meant that Ayanami could get away with anything short of outright treason, or so it seemed.

"Because force is useless if it is not used for a noble purpose. We can not sit on our hands and let another world burn for our inaction. Human life is born of Lilith, and this world is no different. If we let this chain of events continue we may yet see an impact event on this world. Could you live with that?" Ayanami's eyes almost seemed to be glowing behind those contact lenses. A trick of imagination, or memory. I remembered another woman who had that same look, so many years ago. She had been gone for longer than she'd been alive, but I could still--

I should have looked after Ikari more. I should have been there for her, helped her. I should have made sure she wasn't sent to that place she grew up. Maybe I could have kept her from that pain. We'd taken an escape pod from our world, but if I had been better we might have been able to save the world we'd had.

I diverted my eyes from Ayanami and examined the metal wall of my bunk room. I could count the rivets as a distraction if I put my mind to it. "Ikari is going to get you in trouble again."

I felt her hand on my chin and she forced me to look at her. I saw... a ghost. My mind took me back to when I was just a teenager, before Evangelions and Angels and biological contamination. Back to that woman in a lab-coat and a pair of glasses. Glasses that I didn't need to see. Ayanami wasn't her.

"Is that the answer she would have given? Is that the answer she would have wanted you to give to her daughter?"

I felt like I'd been slapped. Hearing those words, in that voice, from that face. I was sixteen again, being chastised for my misbehavior.

"How could you understand? How could you hope to possibly know?" I asked her as the tears welled up in my eyes. My face and chest felt tight, I hadn't felt like this in years.

"Because Unit One moved for you. You are not her daughter, but you do have a bond. A strong bond. You're older than all of us and... You know that I am of her. That's why you are so uncomfortable isn't it, Makinami? Because of what you share with Yui Ikari? That does not change that Rei Ikari needs your help now. We all do." Her voice felt like icewater in my veins.

My hand struck her across the cheek before I really realized what I was doing. She may have been of Yui, but she had spent too much time with Yui's husband. Pulling at my heartstrings to do what she wanted.

She wasn't wrong, and she had made me see that I had an obligation to Ikari, but the means to her end were too cold and callous to have come from that face.

She recoiled from me and held her cheek, the alabaster skin had turned pink from the blow. She'd earned it. "You're too much like her father. Fine, I'll join your mission. I wasn't doing anything important here. Maybe this will be different. Maybe if I'm lucky the Marshal will show me as much leniency as she's been showing you."

"If we're lucky we won't need it." She answered. Her hand was already down from her face.

That was not wrong. "So if you need my help, what is it that you need me to do?"

"We need a sniper."

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 41:
Hail Mary​

I found myself wondering what Becket would have thought if he'd made it this far, if he hadn't died saving my life. Would he have kept going like the rest of them, or would he have joined me in trying to live a mundane life?

We were a people out of place, out of time. We were Pandora's Box, and the people of this world kept trying to pry it open to get at what was inside, regardless of the consequences. I had to wonder how Becket would have handled it.

He had been there for me at one of my darkest times. He had pulled me back from the edge when I was trying to do nothing more than find oblivion in the bottom of a bottle. It was pure dumb chance and luck that he'd been the one on rotation the day that I flew into town and if he'd never met me he might have lived to see today.

But maybe I'd be worse for wear.

So maybe his role was to make sure that I'd made it through, to make it to where I needed to be. And maybe there was no plan at all, but for the universal scale Rube Goldberg machine that was reality. Call it butterfly effect, or call it destiny, there didn't seem to be a functional difference.

Either Becket was meant to take that missile by destiny, or the sequence of events set in motion by the big bang were always going to end there. What purpose did human choice have in the matter? We could either sit back and absolve ourselves of responsibility and let destiny drive, blame everything on that. Or we could accept that our decisions caused everything, and that we had to shoulder the responsibility of every choice we make, that every choice I made led to his death.

But if I chose to believe the latter, if I chose to believe that I had a say in how things turned out. If I chose to believe that there was no puppet master, that there were no strings on me, well, that meant I had to make the only choice that I could make.

He chose to save Rei Ikari, because he believed in Rei Ikari. Therefore, the only choice I could make was to be Rei Ikari. Rei Ikari would never leave a man behind.

Absent a clear adversary, absent Angels or SEELE, my only enemy was anyone who stood against me. I was not at war with the United States, nor even the specific agencies responsible for Kaworu's predicament. My enemy was the individuals who tried to stop me from getting him out.

I took a deep breath and checked my airspeed. Two-fifty on the money. That was within range of what I was pretending to be, and it would hold up as long as nobody decided to look up. We wouldn't be active that long anyway.

I adjusted my goggles and pressed the microphone button. "Dragoon to Archer, what's the mission status?"

"Lancer and Rogue are nearly in position. Convoy in fifteen. Begin your run in twelve. I'll update targets on the fly. Bard will be in the pocket in eighteen... as long as this intel is good and it's not a trap."

"Archer, it's not a trap it's a target rich environment. If it goes sideways call it and I'll roll in for a second pass. Keep the head and tail boxed up and we'll have a nice little shooting gallery. Dragoon out." I released the mic switch and leaned back in the seat.

The P-38K was a smooth machine, even if mine was pushing ninety years old. The Kitty Hawk crewmen had kept it in pristine condition even though there was nobody to fly it. I imagine it must have given them something to do to feel useful given the relative uselessness of air power during the war against Nerv.

They would probably have revolted against the fig leaf insignia I'd painted on the plane after I'd taken it from them, but I needed to prove a point and that was a good way of doing it. I had one chance at this, and I would probably never be able to use the P-38 again afterwards, so I wanted everyone watching to know what I stood for.

If WILLE refused to stand up to the task of keeping this world safe, then Nerv would have to take up the slack. Even if I was the only person on the planet willing to wear that brand, that would be enough to make my point.

Because at the end of the day, Nerv's original and public goal was the protection of mankind against the threat of the Angels. Whatever it was that these people thought they were going to accomplish by reverse engineering Kaworu, or whatever they had planned, it stood against that goal.

And they had my friend.

"Dragoon, three minutes till convoy is in the target zone. I have visual. Roll in." Archer chirped in my ear.

From twenty-thousand feet the descent would grant me a lot of kinetic energy, which I'd keep when I punched the throttle to extend back out and back up to altitude. After that I'd have to get the hell out of dodge before anyone put jets in the air.

If the first pass didn't cut it, I'd have to loop back quickly for a second pass, then extend out of the mission area as fast as I could, as low as I could get away with. I had a place to stash the P-38, but that wasn't what was important anyway.

I pushed the nose down steeply and lined my eye up with the targeting cross-hair. I'd try to keep it to the fifties, but the twenty was loaded with APHEI if for some reason the Raufoss in the fifties didn't cut it.

"Archer to Dragoon, count seven vehicles. Pop one, two, three, five, six, and seven. Looks like a Stryker up front. Four is a tractor trailer rig, armored up trailer. Lancer says that's where Bard is."

I tapped the mic switch and fired off an "acknowledge" then pulled throttle back on both engines. The Stryker meant I'd be glad I had the twenty in the nose. Of course, I also didn't have a computer so I had to guesstimate ranges and bullet drop.

One of the major drawbacks to the older technology was that it was older technology. Analog gun-sights, manually adjusted aim points on the guns. Analog flight controls and instrumentation, fully manual engine controls. I had none of the high technology of the F-2, but I could hold my own against a few ground targets.

I dropped under four thousand feet and rammed the throttles to the stops, still in my dive. I'd have to risk over speed, I did not want to get chewed up by that thirty on the lead vehicle. I guessed range to five hundred meters and mashed down both firing studs. All five nose mounted weapons roared to life with a racket not dissimilar to an elementary school music class; all clanging and banging. Intermittent tracers that had been laced into the belts showed me my trajectory and I walked the fire through the IAV and into the two Humvees behind it.

The way the Stryker started burning before I even finished that half of my pass told me they were out of the fight. The two trucks behind it didn't have a chance even against the fifties, but I'd not let go of the trigger for the twenty and so they'd taken the worst of it. I released the triggers long enough to skip the tractor-trailer and then continued firing on the three Humvees bringing up the rear.

"Archer to Dragoon, one, two, three, five, six, and seven are all either killed or disabled. Rogue and Lancer are moving in on four now. Bard in the pocket in three minutes. I'm changing location to provide cover. Catch you at the rendezvous. Archer out."

I cut power to the phony transponder I'd been using to pretend that I was a Cessna 340 to ATC and kept the throttles firewalled. Altitude down under two hundred feet meant I could see a lot of terrain, up close and personal. Three hundred miles an hour meant I could get deep into the woods of east Texas by the time the sun finished setting.

"Lancer to Dragoon, we have Bard. He appears to be wounded and unconscious, but he is alive. We are proceeding with extraction."

I let myself breathe a sigh of relief at the news that they had him. He'd done enough for us that we owed him this. A successful mission was always a good thing, but saving a friend felt even better. The shit storm we'd stirred up would probably have repercussions for years, and I doubted they'd ever stop looking for me.

On the other hand, Archer and Rogue would both do a pretty good job of making sure that dead men tell no tales, so we might get away cleaner than I could have hoped. Given how good of a shot Makinami was, I wouldn't be shocked if she told me that nobody had been able to get a distress call out.

With Suzu's AT-field abilities it was also unlikely anyone had taken injury from return fire. That left Rogue, the clone. That was a wild card to me, I had spent very little time talking to her. But she was competent, I'd seen video proof of that.

And it was her intel that had gotten us the location of the convoy. The exact dynamic of that was not yet clear to me. She might have been working for Suzu specifically for this purpose, or she was more of a free agent. I'd have to figure that one out, and then figure out what I would even do with the information.

"Lancer to Dragoon. Bard is awake. He has a message." I heard what sounded like a radio being shuffled around from the other side of the link and muffled voices conversing among themselves.

A different voice, not Suzu's, came back on the radio a moment later. "They were done with me. I was never their objective. They've found the Mark Nine. They have been trying to reactivate it. I think that they may have succeeded."

"Well... That's really bad." I replied like an idiot. I hadn't expected news like that. I hadn't expected them to be so far, so quickly. But if those idiots had the Mark Nine activated, they were a danger to everyone including themselves.

I shook my head and eased the craft a little lower to the ground. I suddenly felt a lot more exposed. "Archer, we need to get this information to the people who can do something with it. I'd do it myself but I don't want to get caught over open water."

I had to try to get word to Misato. Failing that, Denisovich or Clark would probably do. Not that I had a better way of getting in touch with them than I did getting in touch with Misato. I found myself wishing Gypsy Rose was up here with me.

"What, you're not afraid of a little Evangelion problem are you?"

"Maybe if I had one of my own sitting in my back pocket, Archer." That, or if I had my F-2 instead of this P-38. If I had known what the score was I probably would have gone that route instead. "I'll be at the rendezvous in twenty-five. Let's hope the world doesn't end before then."

If it did, at least I'd tried.
​

 

[Sunshine Temple]

Common Threads Part Three:

" I might have known more about Ayanami's origins than she did."
Well... Ikari does have inside knowledge... ;p

" Ayanami was wearing brown contact lenses, and had her hair dyed. I didn't really like it. It looked too much like--"

Heh


" I had noticed what she'd stolen from the armory on the Kitty Hawk, if anyone else had noticed she would have been in a world of trouble."

hmmmm


""
That was not wrong. "So if you need my help, what is it that you need me to do?"

"We need a sniper."
""

Hah! Direct and to the point

Chapter 41

Nice introspection on Becket.

" If WILLE refused to stand up to the task of keeping this world safe, then Nerv would have to take up the slack. Even if I was the only person on the planet willing to wear that brand, that would be enough to make my point."

Huh... well... that was what Nerv started out as...
Officially... as far as the public knew...

" Because at the end of the day, Nerv's original and public goal was the protection of mankind against the threat of the Angels. Whatever it was that these people thought they were going to accomplish by reverse engineering Kaworu, or whatever they had planned, it stood against that goal."
Hah! Guess I should have read ahead before commenting

" I let myself breathe a sigh of relief at the news that they had him. He'd done enough for us that we owed him this. A successful mission was always a good thing, but saving a friend felt even better. The shit storm we'd stirred up would probably have repercussions for years, and I doubted they'd ever stop looking for me."

Understatement

" And it was her intel that had gotten us the location of the convoy. The exact dynamic of that was not yet clear to me. She might have been working for Suzu specifically for this purpose, or she was more of a free agent. I'd have to figure that one out, and then figure out what I would even do with the information."

Something that seems to be a very wise idea, as she's sort of the third wheel on the Rei-cycle

""
A different voice, not Suzu's, came back on the radio a moment later. "They were done with me. I was never their objective. They've found the Mark Nine. They have been trying to reactivate it. I think that they may have succeeded."
""
Well... damn.

You still keep the cliffhanger endings coming ^^;;

 

[Jackie]

Well... Ikari does have inside knowledge... ;p

Click to shrink...

Common threads 3 is from the perspective of Mari Makinami.

 

[Sunshine Temple]

Common threads 3 is from the perspective of Mari Makinami.

Click to shrink...

Whoopsie... ^^;

It was a bit hard to tell who was talking, as I confused the POV with Ikari. Dang.
Though maybe there was the gum, as she spit out gum at the start and Ikari was chewing gum earlier

 

[Jackie]

The Curious Case of Rei Ikari: Common Threads
Part Four:
Reaper's Sprint
​

There had never been a real choice, at least not one that I could have ever made differently. When someone begs for your help, you give them your help. That the world was potentially on the line made no difference to me. I just wasn't wired that way.

Not after everything she had done for us.

I was two minutes out from the Hakone region, three from Tokyo-3 proper. I could already see the results of recent battle. The big red one had been stomping its way through an entire armored column and had in large part broken their ranks.

Burning tanks and crashed helicopters littered the city perimeter but even that didn't seem to put much of a dent in the forces that were still active. They weren't our concern, that would wait for the Hornets. "Cylon flight, ignore ground targets for now. Primary concern is Cylon One-Three. Find her and plow the road."

The girl had more balls than most grown men I'd met. She'd have given my sister a run for her money in pure stubbornness, with the recklessness of youth to drive her further. She'd been crazy enough to try to fight an Angel with a fighter jet, then she chased down a nuke.

Attacking a modern army in a plane that hadn't seen combat in seventy years shouldn't have surprised me, even if it did make my job harder. I just had to trust that she was doing the right thing. Nerv was supposed to save the world, so what could we do without it?

"I've got eyes on air to ground tracers, two o clock low." I was almost surprised by the voice of one-two over the radio. I'd let myself slip into my thoughts. Dangerous even in a stealth fighter.

I looked over to the right and saw the long streams of tracer fire raking a column on the ground. I pulled the stick to the right and pushed the throttles up into afterburner. The quicker I could get to the merge, the quicker I could get her out of the shit. Get more fast movers in the area to mop up the JSSDF troops.

The profile of a P-38K Lightning resolved itself quickly as the distance closed and it became undeniable that Iris was completely out of her mind. Out of her mind, and, based on the aggression that seemed to be radiating off of her aircraft, completely pissed off.

She pulled up and to my left and I pulled through to follow in behind her. I could come up along side, hand-signals would get us a common frequency that wasn't guard. I'd escort her out of the fight, or at least provide anti-air support.

Launch detection screeched in my ear and I spammed active radar to find the launch platform. So many distractions, I kept ignoring what was in front of me. I started rolling frequencies over to guard, I had to warn her.

Directly ahead, beyond the P-38 I was nearly on top of I saw a Japanese F-2 bearing down on her, I saw the plume from the sidewinder. No time to warn her, it wouldn't matter.

"Misato, I'm sorry. I love you." Her voice came through on guard. She had accepted it, she was ready to go.

She was going four hundred miles an hour at best. I was supersonic. The speed differential gave me the chance to do something that under most circumstances would have been completely impossible. I kept the throttles pinned and fired off the entire flare bucket as I flew under the 38's belly. Give that seeker head something else to look at.

It was only an instant and I was out in front. No time for a missile launch, no time to even try for guns. I never had a choice. I fully deflected the stick aft and held on as the Gs pressed me down into the ejection seat, even as the entire aircraft tried to shake itself apart. A split second later the missile hit and helped that right along.

I reached for the ejection seat handle and then... nothing.

​

xxx

​

I woke with a start. It was that dream again, the one that felt so real and was completely insane at the same time. The one that made me doubt my sanity. I'd spent months trying to figure it out, trying to find the people in it. People who, of course, didn't exist.

But I couldn't let it go, and they'd taken flying away from me. Pending a full workup and a signoff by a head shrinker, I was grounded. All because of dreams about a girl with blue hair, and a sister who didn't exist.

My neck popped when I rolled out of bed. Feet hit the cold tile and for a minute I was thankful that the dreams had started before New Orleans, and that I hadn't shared everything in them. The parts that I hadn't told anyone about, the giant robots, the monsters. Those were just fairy tale, science fiction.

But then I'd seen video of what had happened in New Orleans. I'd seen the giant robot there. I saw ships that had never been built fighting the US Navy. When I'd seen that, the dreams felt less like a fiction.

I stood up and walked towards the bathroom. The day may as well start early, there was no chance in hell I was getting any more sleep, not unless I wanted those dreams to start all over again. They wouldn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

Whatever questions I had, the answers lay with the group called 'WILLE'.




​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 42:
Unpalatable Truths​

The cold quiet of the barn was abnormally uncomfortable. The taste of spent powder was subtle but present, and the pinging sounds of the cooling exhaust manifolds echoed a little too loudly off the sheet metal walls.

The M4 sitting against my leg while I straddled the left engine nacelle helped to calm my nerves, but if things went sideways at this point I'd probably have been better off trying to make a run over open water for the Kitty Hawk.

Ideally nobody should be able to find me, nobody should know where to look. My paranoia, nevertheless, would not leave me. Every noise made my finger twitch towards the trigger. I'd killed people before, but this was different.

I had the backing of an entire organization before. I had control of a super weapon. I had a good reason.

Was rescuing Kaworu worth the people I'd taken out? I wanted to think that it was. But I also wondered if those men even knew why they were being killed, and we had killed all of them. They probably hadn't deserved it, but we also hadn't had a choice in the matter.

But even if I told myself I had the moral authority to pull the trigger, the fact remained that as much as I was flying the banner, I didn't have the resources of Nerv, or of any organization. I had a few thousand pounds of ammo, a car, a fighter jet with no ground crew or support staff, and a prop fighter from World War Two.

Kaworu might side with me, Mari wouldn't. Suzu could go either way, and I could probably count on the clone to fall in line for lack of anything better to do. That didn't make a compelling show of force. If I kept taking the P-38 into combat I'd eventually get shot down. If I kept raiding convoys and didn't get shot down, eventually the plane would fly itself apart from lack of maintenance.

The F-2Kai would be workable, but any ammunition I used I couldn't replace without resources I didn't have. I didn't have the money or connections to operate on any scale greater than the infantry level and even that was dubious.

And none of that did me any good anyway without something to point it at. A valid target that would get Misato's attention. The thing I needed most was to show her that I was willing to do the necessary things she was unwilling to do.

With Mark Nine being a real threat again, she'd have to listen to me. I'd have to make her listen.

But then all of my goodwill was spent, written out on checks cashed against an overdrawn account. Flying the fig leafed flag was a declaration of war. I had no illusions that any member of that fleet would swing to my side. Not after fifteen years, even if in the end I'd been right.

No, I'd just been lucky.

The sound of gravel under car tires crept through the open barn door. I thumbed the fire selector over to full auto and flattened myself down to the nacelle. If they were friendly they were fine, if they weren't...

A mop of blue-white hair crossed the threshold into the barn and my finger relaxed away from the trigger. The clone, call sign 'rogue'. Behind her were two more sets of footsteps, and then two more heads of hair made themselves known, brown and silver.

Suzu, the lancer. Kaworu, the bard. The M82 was slung over Suzu's right shoulder, and Kaworu was braced against and supported by her left. He looked like he'd had the piss beaten out of him, but he was alive despite the almost full body bruising.

Maybe lucky was better than right.

I dropped down from the engine nacelle and lowered my M4 against myself. "Where's Archer?"

"She's scouting. The getaway was clean but she's thorough." Suzu answered. "If we're discovered they won't try to take us alive."

I felt the impulse to say something sarcastic or irreverent, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Not after what I'd done right in front of her. "I won't let it come to that."

"You shouldn't act like you control it. These people are powerful and motivated and scared. Our arrival in this world started something that we're not likely to stop." Kaworu explained through a pained expression. I had to wonder how much information they'd beaten out of him.

"Even so--"

"Archer says movement ten meters out. She doesn't have a clean shot. One unknown with a rifle." I looked over to Suzu, who had her finger pressed to her ear.

I could hear a foot crunch against gravel just outside the door and brought my M4 to my shoulder. The sound was not what I expected, it was less of a grown man and more like if I or Suzu had--

I saw the flash of moonlight against steel peeking through the doorway, and the clone sprang into action. She drew a short-sword that I had missed before and lunged towards the intruder. I'd never seen her in action before, and I wasn't unimpressed.

The distance was closed in a few seconds and she drew the blade through an overhead slash, it looked like she was going for the neck in the first blow. The intruder lifted their rifle, and I could make out that the flash of light had been a rather substantial bayonet mounted to the front of a full-stocked rifle.

Something about that seemed familiar.

Rogue's wakizashi struck the bayonet with a thunderous crash and a shower of sparks. The intruder managed to get under the attack and locked Rogue's blade into her bayonet's crossguard, then pushed the attack and swung the butt of the rifle hard into Rogue's body.

Rogue brought her knee up into the intruder's crotch and kicked back, breaking the bind and opening up some distance, just enough for a second lunge, again aiming for the neck.

The intruder brought their bayonet up for another block and stepped back, keeping the distance open and keeping their blade forward towards Rogue. The wakizashi struck at the bayonet point again, keeping the barrel out of alignment with her as she pushed hard to close the distance again.

Something about it--

"Archer has a shot, she's taking it!" Suzu yelled over the sounds of the fight. Something was still wrong, this wasn't a soldier. This was something else. Fencer?

The intruder blocked another overhand strike from Rogue right in front of the stacking swivel and let the momentum of the strike swing the rifle around her forward hand. The butt struck Rogue in the side of the head, followed up with a swift butt stroke to the chin that knocked her off her feet.

I recognized the rifle, which meant I knew who the intruder was. "Negative! Archer needs to stand down!" I yelled as I leaped into a sprint. Rogue was on her back, and the intruder was about to deliver the killing blow. I had to stop this, before--

The intruder swung her rifle around and brought the point of the bayonet down on the supine form of Rogue and in that instant the bright orange flash of an AT field lit up the barn and the intruder's face. I could see the shock written all over it.

The muzzle flash that followed was nothing compared to the deafening sound that reverberated through the barn and caused my ears to hiss. The bullet splashed against the AT field and the point of the bayonet was still held at bay, but Rogue was pinned to the floor, unable to strike back.

"That's enough!" I yelled over the ringing in my ears and the temporary flash blindness from staring directly at the muzzle. Victoria wouldn't forgive me if I let it go any further, and I probably wouldn't forgive myself either.

"Raven, back off!" I screamed again.

The intruder stopped and stepped back as if slapped, the fear was evident on her face. She turned to me as Rogue withdrew and brought her blade back to ready, but stopped pushing forward. "Rei?! What the fuck is going on!?"

I sighed and walked over to her. The ringing in my ears was starting to die down anyway, of course I'd never hear that frequency again, but what could you do? "I tried to explain it to you before. You didn't exactly believe me then. The truth is a little bit more difficult to grasp."

She threw her arms to the sides, the rifle rattled a bit when it hit the end of her reach. "Well fucking try! What the hell are you even doing here?"

"Well, I knew he wouldn't look here. I didn't think you would either. I guess if anyone was going to find me here it would have been you, though." I sighed and shook my head, "Rae, there's not a good place to start."

"Then pick a bad place."

"You mean like this? Yeah, okay. Maybe some real introductions." I turned towards Suzu. "Get Archer down here."

"Rei, I'm losing my patience." She stepped towards me. I was intimately aware of that bayonet and what I knew she could do with it.

"Alright, introductions. You've met Suzu. But her real name is Rei Ayanami. The gray haired guy with her is Kaworu Nagisa. The girl you kicked the shit out of is... Well, let's call her the 'Third Rei' for the sake of simplicity." I rattled off while staring at the other woman.

Her face went through a range of emotions, the most common being shock and disbelief, with anger and distrust as a close second. I could neither blame her nor claim surprise. She'd have to accept the truth because she'd seen it.

"Ikari..." she muttered under her breath. I could almost see the gears turning behind her eyes.

"Rei Ikari, designated pilot of Unit One. The third child. Daughter of Gendo and Yui Ikari. Yes." I answered.

Ayanami gave me a look from the side, one that said 'what the hell is going on' almost as well as words could have. She didn't appreciate the gravity of what Rae was trying to process, but I did. It couldn't have been terribly different from when I woke up in a blue Renault so many years ago.

Rae'd seen the AT field. The rest didn't really matter. I was Rei, not Victoria. Telling her anything else about that would only make it worse for her. There was no benefit for either of us. Maybe I didn't love Rae in the way that her wife had, but that didn't mean I didn't care about her.

I wouldn't burden her with the pain.

"This is unbelievable," she finally managed to say after working her mouth mutely a few times. "Completely unbelievable."

"The other option, of course, is that it's all magic. Is that more a more palatable truth?" Ayanami asked her. I could detect a subtle sarcastic tone, though the words themselves made her sarcasm obvious. She was slipping back into old mannerisms.

I stepped forward and put my hand on Rae's shoulder. "I told you I was with WILLE, but that's not exactly true. My allegiance was always to the people I care about. You're going to hear about what we did in the coming days... assuming the world doesn't end before then."

She stared at me and I sucked on my teeth nervously. "And, well," I continued, "WILLE didn't do that, and I didn't do that for WILLE. Whatever it is they'll say happened, I did what I did to rescue my friend, to try to stop the military from tapping into powers they can't control. I did it while wearing a red fig leaf."

I pointed at the P-38 cooling off behind me, and the large red leaf logos emblazoned on the wings and tail. It was a logo I was certain she would have been familiar with. With my hair dyed back the color I preferred and my contacts out, I certainly looked the part she was expecting.

"Why even tell me any of this? I'm a liability now right? Even if I can't help but believe you, you can't trust me with this kind of information, you hardly even know me!" She yelled. She was tearing up, upset, afraid.

"I need you to trust me. You walked in on us, I needed you to understand why. I can't protect you if you don't trust me, I can't keep what's coming away from you." I tried to explain even as my grip on her shoulder got tighter, tighter than I intended.

"Why would you even want to? I'm nobody to you."

I bit down on my tongue as a reminder of how much it might hurt later. "Because you were somebody to Gypsy Rose, to whom I owe a debt I can never repay."

As soon as the words left my mouth I could see it in her eyes, I could see the hurt and the pain. When she heard that name, it was as though she had died all over again. She grabbed my by the wrist and threw my arm to the side, away from her. "How do you know that name?!" She yelled at me. "What could you possibly even know about her!?"

I felt the tears welling up in my own eyes. Seeing Rae like this, I felt myself starting to mourn for a woman I'd never really met, whose life I could remember living, whose absence I could feel every time I was with Rae. What could I say about her? What could help?

I closed my eyes and felt the tears run down the side of my nose. "She loved you. She'd have killed or died for you. You were the first person she loved, and the last. She kept me alive. Without you, she was lost. We fought, we tried to kill each other, but at the very end of everything... at the end of everything there was enough blame to go around. She wanted me to make sure you were safe, and I told her that I would make sure of it."

She shook her head, I could tell she wanted to hit me, or hug me, or cry. "What are you talking about? She never met you. She's dead!"

Behind Rae, I saw Archer, Makinami, walking up through the pasture with her rifle slung against her back. She was wearing her WILLE uniform, even without the patches that much was evident.

I took a breath and looked at Rae again. "She has, and she's not. Not really. Not anymore."

 

[Sunshine Temple]

The Curious Case of Rei Ikari: Common Threads
Part Four:

[Short section but intriguing.

Chapter 42


"I had a few thousand pounds of ammo"

[Few thousand pounds or rounds?

[Oooh nice ending.
[Interesting to watch this spiral out of control again.

 

[Jackie]

The Curious Case of Rei Ikari: Common Threads
Part Four:

[Short section but intriguing.

Chapter 42


"I had a few thousand pounds of ammo"

[Few thousand pounds or rounds?

[Oooh nice ending.
[Interesting to watch this spiral out of control again.

Click to shrink...

pounds.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 43:
What you can't live without​

"They'll never let you land." Makinami's voice was not angry, but it was forceful. Of course it would be.

My eyes flicked from Rae to Mari, "Why do you bring that up?"

"Because I know what an Ayanami would do in this situation." Mari continued, "You're going to take her to see Commander Becket. They won't let you land, not after the operation we just pulled. They're going to be on high alert."

I shook my head. Of course she was right, that's the exact move I was planning to make. Rae needed me to do this, and there was a part of me that wouldn't let her go without it. I looked levelly at Mari, "You know, I'm not an Ayanami, even with these eyes."

She smirked but it didn't quite reach her eyes; in those I saw barely contained anguish. "Your mother was, though. You're not that different."

"You knew her?" I asked. Mari hadn't looked that old when I first met her, but she hadn't changed since then either. I didn't know her enough to know how old she really was, and with the way everything else had been going--

Unit One had moved for her, with no prior contact. She'd made it work when I left with Asuka after the Unit Three incident.

"We were close." Mari admitted, "I'm telling you this because I feel like I owe her that much. Give WILLE a reason not to shoot you down."

I felt my hand curling into a fist, tightening until the joints popped, and then relaxing again. I glanced at Rae, who seemed to be fine with not pressing on either of us for information on what exactly the hell we were talking about, for which I was eternally grateful.

Still, I felt an obligation to her, not just for what she'd done for me, but for what I knew she'd done for her wife. She deserved anything I could give her, didn't she?

I looked over my shoulder at the plane still covered in a tarp, and then to the still-cooling P-38. A reason not to shoot me down? A surrender? There was still too much to do that Misato wasn't doing. Someone had to.

"Alright," I finally said, "What do you advise then?"

"I advise that you be prepared to make sacrifices. You can't have everything, so pick what you can't live without and let go of the rest." Mari finally answered after a pause.

Maybe that's what she'd done. What couldn't I live without, what could I let go of? I looked back at that red leaf painted on the P-38's wing. What that had stood for when we'd all stood behind it. Maybe the ideals weren't identical, but I had the same force of purpose.

"Alright, let's get the Lightning refueled and load fresh belts." I announced. I sucked my teeth and turned towards Rae, "If you're willing to take on the risk, I'll get you where you want to go."

xxx​

The P-38 cockpit was not intended for two people. One short person could fit comfortably, a taller pilot would be a little more cramped, but it was always doable. With the pilot's rear armor plate and the original tube radio removed there was a little more storage space in the back, behind the pilot's seat.

It was this quirk of my particular aircraft that gave rise to one of the worst ideas I'd had. The F-2 was out of the question. It was my final bargaining chip, and flying in with that plane, after what I'd done, was too threatening a posture for them to let me through.

But in a pinch, if we tried really hard... Well, the P-38 would do.

I glanced up into the mirror and looked at Rae, who was curled up into a less-than-comfortable position in order to fit on top of the surge tank behind my seat. She was, fortunately, small enough that she could fit into the space normally reserved for the tube-radio that the plane was built with.

It didn't make me any less fearful that we were in a relatively safe world. There was no Angel to worry about and yet my fear was tenfold what it had been the day that I first took Misato into the sky. Maybe it was because I could pretend the Angel had other motivations, it didn't have an intellect, it wasn't targeting me.

But I'd been a menace. There were human minds involved, there were grudges and hatreds following me around now. The Americans most certainly wanted blood paid back in kind. WILLE wouldn't take kindly to the P-38s new livery. It wasn't thought out, but I couldn't just go live that boring life anymore, not with the mark nine in play.

It wasn't like I was even that suited, I didn't feel like I had anything to offer that Asuka or Ayanami or Mari couldn't do. I was at best the same, but I couldn't stand the inaction of just letting them handle it. I was probably selfish, but I wanted to be involved, at least so I could see Misato.

Maybe I could get Rae back her lost time. Maybe I could get back my own with Misato.

Unfortunately we couldn't have much of a conversation over the sound of the engines chugging along. It might have been a blessing, given how much confusion and stress we'd both been through the last few hours. A relatively non-communicative trip to WILLE's platform in the Gulf might be exactly what we both needed.

Radio silent over the Gulf of Mexico, water as far as the eye could see. I was a sitting duck and screwed if anything went wrong with the engines or fuel. Even so, it was still beautiful. Out on the horizon, just at the edge of what I could see was a little speck that I was hopeful would resolve into at least part of the fleet.

I still had the fuel to turn back, but by this point I didn't know what to do if we failed to find them.

If that was them, they certainly already had us on radar, but there was no stopping that. I'd reveal who I was as late in the game as possible. As far as they could tell this was a civilian aircraft.

I felt my anxiety building and rolled the throttles forward for a little extra airspeed. The faster we got there the faster it would be over, that's how it worked, right?

There was a click over the radio, on the guard frequency. It surprised me but didn't seem to indicate anything in particular. The fact that it nearly made me jump out of my skin was a testament to the adrenaline and stress I was experiencing.

The tail warning radar screeched a warning note and the red light on the panel lit up. My hands clenched tight on the yoke and I wrenched it over into a hard snap roll to the left and then hauled the yoke back towards my chest.

The plane screamed as it pulled through the roll and pitched until I was staring at water through my canopy and the altimeter screamed down under fourteen thousand. I could see Rae trying to hold herself in place behind me in the mirror. That wouldn't be the worst of it.

I looked up through the canopy and saw a plume dangerously close. I'd been shot at without so much as a 'hey' from the aggressor. If I didn't die in the next five seconds I'd have to figure out why that might be.

I pushed the throttles through the wire and kicked in war emergency power on both engines, for what good it might do. A quick movement of that same hand had both drop tanks released and free falling away from the plane.

I didn't bother telling Rae. She wouldn't hear me and even if she did there wouldn't have been time.

Both engines screamed as we tore through five hundred miles per hour and the plane shuddered from the constant pitch turn. Instrumentation would have made it easier, but my only hope was to try to notch the missile by hand, to get the plane into a fifty knot relative velocity window to hide it in the ground clutter.

I spared a glance 'up' through the canopy at the plume, five seconds, four. My eyes flicked between Rae and the missile. She hadn't noticed it yet, she could die without knowing why. Two, one.

The whole aircraft shook like it had been gripped by the hand of God and then nothing. It had been a radar guided missile, and the thing that saved our lives was a stupid quirk of engineering, and it wouldn't work again.

The center of the radar return was where the missile was trying to aim, it must have just barely missed by flying between the booms and behind the cockpit.

The attack had come from behind, from the coast. The Americans caught up to me? Intel must have gotten out after all.

I keyed the radio and started yelling, "Cease fire! I surrender! I surrender!"

No response, nothing. I could see contrails above while I leveled into a mad sprint towards the fleet. If I could get close enough they wouldn't have a choice, right? The fighters were still bearing down but hadn't fired again, they were probably closing in for a guns or heater kill. They could afford it, they could outrun out turn and out gun me.

I needed help.

I kept the radio keyed up on guard, "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Cylon One-Three is under attack. Repeat, Cylon One-Three is taking fire."

The plane shook violently as it shed speed it earned through the dive and leveled out a couple of dozen feet above the water's surface. It would buy me minutes at most, and no reply on the radio. Behind me Rae had become aware we were in trouble, I only wished I could have done something to calm her fears.

Or my own fears.

"God dammit Victoria, Rae is in the plane with me!"

"Cylon One-Three, this is Wunder-actual. Maintain course and altitude." There was a brief hesitation and then Victoria's voice came back. "Attention American military aircraft, disengage or you will be shot down. If that P-38 goes down your ejection seats won't save you. If you don't think I'm serious I invite you to test me. Wunder out."

I felt a smile creep onto the corner of my mouth. They might have decided to help me anyway, but Rae's presence on the plane lit a fire under Victoria's ass and got me what I needed. Still, I knew and they knew who pulled the op against that convoy.

I could only hope that they found me to be in the right when I told them why.

In the sky above me shells started to burst, flare and chaff shells fired from the sixteens on the Iowas based on the range and intensity They must have been closer than I thought, or I was going faster than I thought.

In either case I would get to land soon and for the first time in a long time I was looking forward to being outside of the cockpit.

The tail radar screamed again and I looked up into the mirror to see one of the jets had closed in on me and was trying to line up for guns. He'd apparently accepted the invitation. I stepped into the left rudder and pulled back on the yoke as a burst of tracer fire shot past my right wingtip. He was definitely out for blood.

I couldn't let him keep me turning, he could get his energy back a lot faster than me and if he caught me in a position where I couldn't maneuver we'd both be dead. Not that it was that far off in the first place. I could force an overshoot but there was no way I'd ever be able to get guns on him. Not if he knew what he was doing.

"I'm in trouble!" I yelled as another burst of fire tore past the canopy far far closer than I'd ever be comfortable with. I reached over and closed the radiators for a little extra airspeed. I would overheat the engines in short order but cool engines wouldn't do me any good if I was dead.

My heart was pounding up into my chest as the lighting twisted and pitched through the air, each time only narrowly avoiding getting tagged by twenty millimeter cannon shells from the jet chasing us.

Jet. Fighter jet. Right.

I twisted the yoke as hard as I could to the left to tighten up the roll while I pulled the radiators back open. Engine temperatures started dropping immediately and so did my airspeed. The plane shook and the engines strained, I needed to seal the deal. Flaps down to the combat position increased my pitch rate substantially, then I chopped the throttle and stepped hard into the rudder.

The force of the plane rotating sideways into the air-stream pressed me forward into my harness, I could only imagine the difficulty Rae was having holding on, but the maneuver did what I needed it to. I bled airspeed and forced the pursuing fighter into an overshoot.

The silhouette of a twin engine fighter passed over my canopy and I immediately returned the throttles to the stops and hauled back on the stick to increase the separation, at least for a moment. The sky filled the front of my canopy before I snap-rolled back over and pulled through the corkscrew.

Ahead of us, the F-15, which I now saw it to be, was pulling into his own roll to deny me a firing solution. Rolling scissors. If he tried to break away and use airspeed to get away I could probably hit him while he extended out, at the very least I had enough ammo to last longer than he could as long as I could keep his nose off my tail.

But then he had the energy to outlast me in the scissors.

I was lucky enough that we were locked into the scissors in the general direction of the platform, and of Wunder.

"Ikari what the hell did you do!?"

"Asuka!?" I could use that. If she was on the radio she was in something: a fighter, maybe Unit Two? It didn't matter, I might not actually die today. The fight would be over the moment I had backup, but could a fighter really be in the air already?

I stepped into the rudder to bring my reticle over the flight path of the Eagle and pressed down on the firing studs; both the machine guns and the nose mounted auto-cannon barked out a steady stream of party mix towards the fighter jet.

It didn't connect and I hadn't expected it too, but I wasn't going to go down without a fight as futile as fighting might end up being.

Ahead of me the water started to ripple and a huge tracer shot past us, followed by a second and a third. I tried to follow it back to its source and--

Unit Two was standing on the surface of the water, slowly rising upwards on the back of the Wunder. So that's where they'd been hiding it. I spotted the muzzle flash of the rifle Asuka was using as another tracer lanced towards us.

It looked like she was trying to shoot down the F-15. It made me wish Mari was here, she probably would have landed the shot.

The F-15 pitched violently into the vertical. Asuka might not have hit, but she spooked the pilot into evasion. I squeezed both firing studs as I pulled back on the yoke and chased the enemy pilot into his panic climb. I didn't have the horsepower to hang with him, but if I was lucky at least one of my shots might land home, and I could turn inside of his radius any day of the week.

Clear blue sky once again filled my forward canopy as tracers lanced up towards my target as the much larger tracers bracketed it on either side. He was still pulling away from me though, I wouldn't catch up to him.

And I didn't have to.

As my airspeed fell and I started to stall I watched one of the tracers impact the tail section of the jet and remove it from existence in an instant. The ejection of the pilot from what remained of his aircraft followed soon after as we turned and fell into an airspeed recovering dive.

The water filled the canopy and I eased back on the yoke until we leveled back out. Wunder was much closer, but we couldn't land there. Victoria must have been prepared for this eventuality to have gotten to us so soon, though not soon enough to save us had Unit Two not activated.

"I told you I'd get you where you needed to go!" I yelled over my shoulder to Rae, hopefully loud enough for her to hear me. It hadn't gone the way I would have liked, but it did work out in the end.

I eased the power back on both engines as we popped up over top of the Wunder and eased the left wing down to raise my hand in a salute to Unit Two through the upper canopy. Of course, this also gave everyone who was looking a nice clear look at my livery.

"Cute paint job. Runway on the central platform is open and you're clear to land. I hope you've got a good reason."
I knew I shouldn't say it; I couldn't bite back my retort. "Yeah, my reason is that I didn't forget my job. Cylon One-Three, out."

I toggled the radio off after that, whatever Victoria might say back, I didn't want to hear it.

I rolled the landing gear handle downwards and brought the flaps out the rest of the way. With the platform and runway just ahead of us I wanted to be going as slow as I could be when I set down, so that I could make sure not to over-run the runway.

As expected, the controls loosened up as our airspeed dropped. I was either packing brass ones or completely out of my mind to land a plane bearing this logo in the middle of WILLE central. Why not both?

I was trying to make a point, and no better way than this, no better way then telling them what they let happen. Rae was as much a trump card as she was a passenger. They would never fire a shot at me with her aboard.

I would like to think I commanded the same respect, but with Victoria in a position of authority and Misato giving me the cold shoulder I couldn't be sure of that. No, I needed an insurance policy.

I added a little power to slow our descent and the plane smoothed out a little, controls tightened up just a little. Ahead of us the six ocean platforms strung together with an airstrip in the middle grew ever larger. Its size could have easily rivaled Nerv headquarters back when it was still inside the geofront.

At a guess the runway looked to be about two hundred feet above the water; when I passed under three hundred feet I cleared the outer marker and flared. The mains touched with a chirp and I chopped power down to idle and leaned into the wheel brakes.

The plane slowed rapidly, and I wasn't going that fast to begin with, as we approached a turn-off onto an open area flanked by aircraft elevators, that would be my destination. A little differential braking, releasing the right and leaning into the left, steered us onto the pad.

It looked like people were already waiting for us. Two officers uniforms in red, two more in a darker blue, and those two had guns. That was expected.

I killed the engines and pushed the canopy open. I felt my legs trembling as I pushed myself out onto the wing and then dropped onto the platform surface. I could hear Rae working herself out of the cockpit behind me, but I didn't look; she could handle herself.

I was more concerned with the people sent to greet us. Two women, one taller than the other. They approached while the armed men stayed behind. Even with the sunglasses the one on right, the taller one, wore, I could tell who she was.

My mouth dried up, my throat felt tight. Eyes watering. 'Pick what you can't live without, let go of the rest.' Mari's words echoed in my mind. My feet were moving before I could put thought into it. Hands clenched into fists and relaxed again.

I could remember the feel of touch, the scent of shampoo and perfume, the warmth of an embrace. Mari was right, and I had made my decision. I pulled my goggles and cap off and dropped them to the deck, they didn't matter.

I almost died, almost got Rae killed at the same time. The chances I took, even if there wasn't another way... Maybe it was the brush with mortality or the realization that we only had the time if we were lucky; I couldn't stand to wait any longer.

Misato stared down at me as I found myself in front of her, only a few dozen inches away. Her hand pulled back for a slap, and I took that last step forward. Something I couldn't live without, I put my arms around her and let her jacket soak up the tears.

 

[Sunshine Temple]

Cool, nice to see a full chapter.
And oh dear.... meting Misato...

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 44:
Getting the band back together​

The meeting room we occupied looked like it had been carved right out of an old ship, and it very well may have been. They had to get the materials for the platform from somewhere and they hardly needed every ship that had come through. Tenders and cargo ships and the like. They were more for mobility than storage and WILLE no longer had a need to run.

"So are we going to address the elephant in the room?"

I felt my mouth curl up at the corner and couldn't fight back a snicker. "Sorry Gypsy, are you talking about the convoy hit or the angry Korean?"

"I think your actions are more concerning to our stability at the moment. I'd like to hear an explanation for that first." Misato said levelly.

She hadn't pushed me away when I'd embraced her. After a moment her hand had even come down to rest on my back. Maybe there was still something there after all these years. The fifteen years had been kind to her, but my feelings wouldn't have changed a bit even if they hadn't been.

"They had my friend. I wanted him back." I answered simply.

"You know what happened last time you felt like that." Victoria interjected, leaning across the table.

"Yeah well, I don't think there's much of a chance of a P-38 setting off an impact event. Human beings don't require that much effort to kill. You should know what's at stake, what they could get from him. What they did get from him. I don't have any regrets."

I thought Misato might climb over the table and slap me. Victoria beat her to the punch and threw her clipboard at me. "No regrets?! Are you out of your goddamned mind? You declared war on the United States and your little stunt with Raven signed us up to fight it!"

I let the clipboard hit me and shook my head, "No, Nerv declared war on the United States. The P-38 wears that insignia for a reason. I'm flying that flag because yours doesn't seem to stand for much. They captured and experimented on my friend. He's as much a reason as any that you all get to live in this living world instead of our old wasteland."

I sighed and leaned against the table, stared down at my reflection in the glossy surface. "It doesn't matter. They got what they were after. They turned the Mark Nine back on. If they let that thing off the chain I can't stop it, not even with the F-2. I came here because you needed to know, you need to be ready to stop it."

"If that's true... we will need some kind of proof. I don't expect you to have any, but we will need to find some way of getting it." Misato mused, rubbing her chin and looking over at the wall as if lost in thought.

"Hey..." Rae started from behind me, "I really don't want to get involved in this really heavy shit you guys have got going on, but why did you back Rei up once you found out I was in the plane with her?"

"That's a complicated question to answer. I'm not sure that this is really the right time--" Victoria tried to explain. I could see the blush rising to her cheeks. Her evasiveness made my blood boil. Rae would be the only person that could take her from one hundred back to zero like that, knock the wind out of her sails and stop her rage in it's tracks.

I knew that for the same reasons she did, and I wouldn't stand for it.

"Gypsy Rose!" I yelled, "I swear I will tell her everything if you don't start telling her the truth right now."

"Rei--"

"No! Tell her your name, right now, or I swear to God I will!" I felt the bones in my right hand cracking and my nails digging into the soft flesh of my palm. I would do more than tell her, I had a right hook that was begging for another go.

Victoria took a deep breath and closed her eyes, then let it out slowly and re-opened them. "My name is Victoria Eleanor Becket. I was adopted after my father died in the second impact, my name was changed from J--"

"You're alive." Rae said simply. Two words that seemed to lift her higher than I'd seen her since we'd come here. Since I had met her for the first time outside of memories that weren't mine. She moved slowly around the table, crossed the few feet in what seemed like slow motion. Her eyes never left Victoria.

"I'm not... Raven I'm not the same Victoria, I remember but... she die--"

Rae grabbed Victoria by both shoulders and stared directly into her eyes. "August fifteenth two thousand five."

Victroria stared back at her and I could see the tears forming in her own eyes. I felt jealous, lonely, but satisfied. She wasn't mine, she'd never be mine. Her heart didn't lie with Rei Ikari, no matter what I remembered. That was okay.

Finally, Victoria's lips parted. "Yes."

Rae pulled Victoria against her and buried her face against her neck. "That's... good enough. I missed you."

I felt my throat tightening up; felt my eyes watering. I stepped back and ducked out through the door behind me.

I shuffled down the hallway until I couldn't make out the words anymore. It was... difficult, but it was not my reunion to participate in. I could never tell Rae that I remembered the same things Victoria did. I could never tell her that when she said that date I too felt the absence of the cold metal against my chest.

I wasn't Victoria, I never would be, but that didn't mean that I couldn't fall for a memory. It didn't mean I couldn't long for and ache for something I didn't have anymore.

"Ikari, hey."

I looked up, Asuka was standing in her plug suit. She'd washed herself off but it did make a certain sense that she stayed dressed for combat. I wasn't really surprised that she'd come to see me, or maybe to keep an eye on me.

"Shikinami. Good shooting. I owe you one." I shrugged back towards the room as a pretext for rubbing my jacket sleeve across my eyes, "bit of a tearful reunion between Victoria and her wife in there."

Asuka frowned at me and looked towards the door. "I didn't think she was married."

"Victoria Becket wasn't, but the Victoria from this earth was. Before she died." I shrugged again and reached up to tap the side of my head, "S'all up here. Can't get what I want, could get her what she wanted."

She leaned against the wall next to me. "I didn't think you two got along. You did spend the better part of a year trying to kill each other." Her surprise was evident in her voice, but she didn't seem any more put out than that. Not angry, at least.

"She's more like me than she's not. We're... it doesn't matter. She was trying to kill my dad, she's not doing that anymore. It was for Rae too. She's not the same Victoria who died, but she's got the same face, same memories. It was just a little detour, they met again at the end." I sighed and slumped down to sit on the floor against the wall.

"You seem so excited about it." She deadpanned while sitting down next to me. "I would expect you to be a little happier about playing matchmaker."

"I don't have the same face." I shook my head, "My heart lies with someone else. I just wish that she could go back to the way we used to be. I tried to live without her, live without this. I guess I just can't go home from the war... but maybe I could go home to her."

She chuckled softly, it was a little foreign to me, had been so long since I'd heard it, I supposed. "Can't live a life where you're not shooting things and causing trouble huh?"

I smirked and looked at her. "Come on, you're not any better."

She shrugged and put her arms behind her head, smirked, and took a breath. "Well, it's not like they could get by without their best Eva pilot. Mari's alright but she's no me, and her Eva is no Unit Two."

And her Unit Two was no Unit One, but that was out of my reach for the time being.

"Speaking of Mari, when is she going to be back with the fleet?"

"The Dallas is going to pick them up off the coast and bring them in silently. You've really stirred up a hornet's nest with the stunt you pulled."

"Ayanami put me up to it." I shrugged.

She rolled her eyes and put her right hand up to her forehead with a little more flair than was necessary. "Of course she did. There's something wrong with both of you. I don't know why I put up with either of you."

"I appreciate it all the same. You didn't have to do what you did for me today."

I felt her hand squeeze my shoulder. I looked over and she shook her head at me. "After what you did for me, I did have to. I was already launching Unit Two before Victoria gave the order."

I smirked and leaned back against the wall. Maybe things were looking up after all, Nerv insignia or not.

xxx​

I was more comfortable in the hanger than I'd been in the briefing room, the smell of lubricants and fuel and spent flare buckets was calming in its familiarity. The hanger I'd found myself in after departing Asuka's company was a hanger full of Raptors.

Cylon flight's hanger.

Despite being relatively devoid of people it was well populated with equipment. Missile carriages, spare drop tanks, and four F-22 Raptors to fill the six painted rectangles on the floor, each with a number painted in the center. The first and third slots were vacant, probably on a mission of some sort.

The click of my boots against the metal floor was the only noise as I walked past the aircraft. The size of the machines was only truly apparent when you got close. Somehow when they were in the air the scale just wasn't as clear. The last time I'd seen them in the air--

I shook my head and stepped back from the plane I'd approached. I looked down to find myself standing in the first slot, with '1-1' painted on the floor. This slot was cleaner than the others, without the spots or tire marks that the others had.

I at the far end, towards the middle of the hanger and away from the wall, there was a word written in English on the floor. Letting my curiosity get the better of me, I walked down the length of the slot until the word resolved itself. Red lettering on the edge of the yellow rectangle, reading 'Becket.'

The lump in my throat returned with a vengeance and my eyes blurred, filled with tears. After all this time, was the loss still as fresh for them as it was for me? I tried to blink away the tears and they dripped down my face and splattered against the floor.

A strong hand gripped my shoulder from the side, larger than Misato's hand, adult, male. I looked to the side and up into an older man's eyes. "Miller?"

He was older than I remembered, but he'd have to be. It had been fifteen years. Cylon One-Two. Alan Miller. We'd flown down from Alaska together.

"We don't blame you, so you shouldn't blame yourself. He did it because he wanted to do it. You were worth it to him." He squeezed my shoulder and pointed over to the other vacant spot. "Come on, I have something to show you."

We hadn't talked much, just in passing. Becket had always been the one I'd talked to, he'd been the one who'd taken care of me. My contact with the rest of the flight was limited either due to politics or discomfort, I didn't really know. Before now, I hadn't really thought about it.

I let him guide me to the other empty slot, passing by the occupied '1-2' slot. 'Miller' was written in red block lettering in front of the yellow border in the same way that 'Becket' had been. The '1-3' slot looked just like the first one had, clean and devoid of debris or stains. At the head of the slot, in red block lettering, 'Ikari' was written.

I tried to blink the fresh tears away and turned towards him. "Why? After everything that happened, after my mistakes, why?"

"Because you earned it. We didn't fly together for long, but you earned your place. Because when Becket went down you were as angry as any of us. You won't find anyone in the flight who doesn't feel the same way." He patted my shoulder and stepped few steps away, looking over towards the hanger door.

He smiled and looked back towards me and the empty space in which I stood. "When you're ready, as far as we are concerned, that spot will be waiting for you."

"How does Victoria feel about that?"

"I didn't ask her permission."

I nodded, "I guess time doesn't heal all wounds. You know I might have started a war with the Americans."

He shrugged and leaned against the side of his aircraft, "It's not my America."

I closed my eyes and took a breath, gave myself a moment to think. It wasn't the same as the world we left, but did that really matter? This was a place we could protect, had to protect, and could live in, become a part of.

"It could be."

"Maybe one day, but not right now. We've been paying attention to more than you know."

"Which means what exactly?" Cryptic nonsense was more of my father's forte, I was more about the straightforward, at least right now.

"That's enough for now. I should have guessed that you'd have found your way here. You really are her, aren't you?"

I whirled around at that voice. It was probably the most Misato had said to me since I'd come back from Unit One. Was that why she had shunned me? "Of course, I've always been Rei Ikari. Were you afraid I wasn't?"

The frown on her face, and the blush on her cheeks, told me what I needed to know. Had she expected this conversation to happen when she followed me here? "I was afraid you might not be."

I stepped away from Miller and walked up to Misato, looked up into her eyes. "You should have just asked. I'm sorry about... everything before, everything I never said. I was afraid everything would turn worse if I said anything at all."

She shook her head and put her finger to my lips. I felt my cheeks heating up in a way they hadn't in years, felt the butterflies in my stomach. "Don't look back, just look forward, Rei."

When her finger fell from my lips I moved in and pulled her into a hug. This time she wasn't restrained, this time she didn't pull back or tense up. Her arms wrapped around me and--

"Holy shit, Miller you gotta hear this!" The moment was ruined, we both turned to see a man sprinting into the room holding a radio in his hand, his cheeks were flushed and sweat slicked his skin. He skidded to a stop in front of us and tried to catch his breath.

"Anderson? What's going on?" Miller asked the panting man. His hand had already reached out to grab the other man on the shoulder to help stabilize him.

The other man, Anderson, shook his head and cranked the volume knob on the radio. The sound of static crackled and echoed through the hanger for a few moments before a voice came back on the radio.

"Unidentified helicopter please submit identification immediately, you are in restricted airspace."

"November Niner Eight Five Alpha Bravo requesting landing clearance. My name is John Becket. I need to see Misato Katsuragi immediately."

 

[iamnuff]

"So fucking what!? I couldn't know it would be the same! It wasn't supposed to be Asuka! I just wanted to make sure you were safe, I didn't want to change it, couldn't bear to see you die!" I screamed back. I couldn't take it, couldn't keep looking at her eyes, seeing that hurt.

Click to shrink...

Just reading through this story now, but the bit where Rose and Misato confront Rei feels... kinda fucked.

Rose trying to pin guilt on Rei for Unit 1 going berserk is odd in and of itself. Rei not refuting that is even more so. ("Oh, yeah, sure. I was unconscious, unresponsive and bleeding out, but I'm sure that unit 1 going on a rampage was my fault")

Rose talking shit about Rei killing people is crazy, given that she was the one trying to murder Rei and forcing her to retaliate. (but that ridiculous self-righteousness is consistent with her earlier characterisation)
Her even pretending to have the moral high ground is absurd. She's literally trying to blow up the only organization capable of stopping the angels.
Gendo's end-goal (assuming it's even the same in this AU) doesn't matter, the immediate threat needs to be stopped before you start talking about the endgame.

Misato taking Rose's word over Rei is just strange. This is the woman who held a gun to her head, tried to kill her and her wards multiple times and most recently attempted to nuke her commander.

Surely Misato's first response to Rose showing her face should have been to open fire and not stop until Rose was dead, regardless of what she tried to say or do?
Even if she were willing to listen to this murderous terrorist, why would she believe that Rei had any way to know that Unit three was going to be taken over by an Angel?

Rei told her about her memories from another life, she never said anything about knowing the plot of EVA (Rei herself seems to forget that she has future knowledge, more often than not)

So in a nutshell, some crazed and murderous terrorist who apparently believes NERV to be a conspiracy to end the world, showed up, didn't get shot, and somehow managed to convince Misato that Rei could predict angel attacks but didn't bother to warn anyone.

And Misato just bought that shit, well enough that she laid into Rei before even letting her get an answer out?

I gotta say, that whole scene feels like a mess. I get that nobody is thinking clearly right now, but it still feels like conflict for the sake of conflict, and old EVA staple.

edit: Several chapters later

"You're looking a little pale, but that is you."

I looked up, and she had aged, more than Misato had. More than I would have thought. But answers weren't forthcoming, and I had other things on my mind.

"Gypsy Rose." It was an accusation as much as a statement, but I'd know that face anywhere, I'd recognize those eyes and that voice until the end of time, burned into my memory as they were.

Click to shrink...

Oh, you're doing EoE 3.0.

I never really got into that. Too much shit not getting explained and too many people shitting on Shinji for doing what he was supposed to do.

Kill the aliens, save your friends and comrades, then black out and wake up 15 years later, the world half-ended and for some reason that nobody will explain everybody blames you. Despite you explicitly being the one who stopped it.

It felt genuinely bad to watch, so I never finished.
I never understood why instrumentality half-happened or why that (somehow) killed billions of people (but not those closest to it?) or why it was apparently Shinji's fault.

Or why Nerv is now the bad-guy. Does Gendo think he can complete instrumentality? How the hell does he have enough manpower or resources to even try?
Especially with his lead scientist and operations commander having defected (or rather, with him having defected to the "end the world" side, and them remaining on the "protect the world" side.)

Surely the rank and file workers at NERV would have something to say about Gendo wanting to end the world so he can meet up with his dead wife?

Everything after Shinji waking up 14 years later and having everyone he fought to protect turn on him (complete with a fucking bomb-collar) felt deeply stupid.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 45:
John Becket​

We get what we deserve. Through action or inaction, everything always comes back to us in the end, and there were no exceptions. My pain was my penance, my solitude was my reward, for a time. Maybe the other shoe hadn't dropped yet, maybe this reconciliation was for moments, and then another fifteen years of pain. I could endure it, if nothing else killed me first I imagined I might endure that fifteen years fifteen times over.

At least, it felt that way.

But if I had killed the world, John Becket had saved it. For all the wrong I did to all the people I'd done it to, he sacrificed himself to save me. When the chips were down, and I was the last one standing, the last one between an Angel and the end of the world.

Maybe I'd flinched, or maybe I should have. Maybe I should never have run, but if I killed the world, John Becket saved every single soul that survived it.

If he was coming here, now, there had to be a reason for it. Was he given a second chance, like I had? Was this a blessing, or was it a curse? If we got what we deserved, what was it that he had earned? Why was he here?

I raised my hand to block some of the down-wash from the helicopter as is settled towards the pad. Of course, a group of heavily armed men awaited around the slowly descending UH-1H, just in case. I couldn't imagine they were necessary.

And if it was John, and if they did try to shoot... Well, even if it wasn't the same man, there were at least four people who wouldn't stand for it. If Victoria wasn't armed I'd be shocked, and if she engaged than Rae, who had at least two guns on her person that I knew of, would back her up.

At that point Miller would either throw down or call out. Cylon Flight would no longer obey WILLE orders in either case.

Question: Had the unity of the group always been so tenuous?

For my part, I had a snub nosed magnum tucked into my boot and a hold-out pistol against the small of my back. AT field in a pinch.

High stress situations and itchy trigger fingers being what they were, I couldn't absolve myself of responsibility for instigating the tense atmosphere with the shit I'd pulled over the gulf.

Of course, that didn't mean I had any regrets. At least none about the last thirty six hours.

I found myself smiling as the skids touched down on the pad. He'd died for me once, returning the favor was the least I could do.

"I'll go first." I heard myself say without even thinking it over. My feet were moving before the engines had even started to spin down. The soldiers behind me shifted their attention to me, but Misato raised a hand to my side and they held back.

Truth be told they probably didn't mind having someone else play canary.

Clearly he wasn't in that much of a hurry. The rotor wash kept blowing down and messing up my hair as I approached. The engine was winding down, surely enough, but he still hadn't come out of the cockpit. If my luck held out I'd be there to open it for him before he finished the shutdown checklist.

He was certainly more disciplined than I was.

By the time I reached the cockpit door the down-wash had reduced to a soft gale. I was about to open the door when I thought better of it; if for some insane reason he did remember me, I might not want to give him too much of a startle before I knew if he had a gun and a panicky temperament.

I opted to lean my back against the side of the fuselage aft of the latch and knocked on the glass with the back of my hand. Three taps, nothing fancy. Just enough to let him know someone was outside waiting for him. Someone maybe not pointing a gun at him.

He'd had to have seen all of us on approach; I would think less of him if he hadn't. He'd have seen all of us, and he'd have seen the armed men. If I could finish the day without the taste of burnt powder in my nose I'd be alright, better than average anyway.

I felt a smirk creep onto my face and I glanced over at Miller. If Becket did remember me, I had to fuck with him, just a little.

I heard the door crack open and I licked my bottom lip, "yōkoso! O-namae wa nan desu ka? Ikari Rei desu!"

His hesitation was almost palpable, but a moment later the door popped the rest of the way open and a very confused looking man stepped out onto the helipad. A man who looked exactly like the last time I'd seen him, over fifteen years ago.

He turned to me and I gave a wave and a smirk, "o hisashiburi desu ne."

When he locked eyes with me his expression shifted and he looked like he'd been struck, or perhaps that he'd seen a ghost. The latter wouldn't be far off the mark for either of us.

His mouth worked up and down in confusion for a few moments before he tried to string something together in stilted Japanese. "Uh... eigo... wa... dekimasu ka?"

I nodded, "Absolutely, but that's not as fun. So you here about that Eagle we dropped in the drink or is it something else? I have on good authority that he survived the journey if you're concerned."

The conversational whiplash had gotten to him, or at least it looked like it. His face went through a range of emotions before settling on unhappy confusion. "Yes, no, sort of. Glad he's alright, not why I'm here but a good excuse. And you... You're real, and that means Katsuragi is real, and that means I'm not losing my mind."

I nodded, "Yeah, that's always a good feeling. I guess this means you remember. How much do you remember?"

He looked out at the assembled WILLE personnel, those with and without rifles and then back to me. "I feel like this isn't the best venue for that kind of a conversation. It's been kind of a fucked up day and I don't know how I feel about spilling my guts around a bunch of guys with guns pointed at me."

"Yeah, you're not wrong. I'll see if Misato can set up a conference room or something. There are more than a couple of people who will want to see you, but I'm not sure how many of them you'll remember. And..." I trailed off, looking over at the armed men.

He'd died for me, I could return the favor if I had to.

"And what?" he asked, noticing my hesitation.

"And, since I owe you... well a version of you, more than I could ever repay. If it comes down to it there's a four shot three-fifty-seven holdout pistol under my jacket at the small of my back. It draws to my right side." I answered under my breath, loud enough for him to hear me, quiet enough that nobody else would.

His eyebrows rose a bit and he nodded, "I bet there's a really good story behind that."

"I've had kind of a fucked up day too."

"I'll keep that in mind."

xxx​

The round table we found ourselves seated at was much more elaborate than the simple room I'd been questioned in previously, and I supposed that was the difference between Becket and I. In him people saw a much more respectable hero, though around this table I certainly found friends of my own.

Clark, Denisovich, Miller, Misato, Gypsy Rose, and even Akagi were present, among many people whom I didn't readily recognize. Age had left its mark on each of them, everyone but me, everyone but Becket.

But then he'd never had to live those intervening years like everyone else had. Eyes were not on me, however, but this meeting wasn't about me.

It was about Becket.

"This meeting will be a little informal, as this is probably coming as a surprise to all of you. I know it was a surprise to me." Clark announced with a laugh. "That having been said, this is some pretty unfamiliar territory, which given the last fifteen years or so is really saying a lot."

It was funny, Clark didn't sound British, he was an American by birth as far as I knew, but that level of understatement could only come from an Englishman. Of course, WILLE was multinational in origin so he probably had plenty of time to learn it.

I wondered if that was a check I had written for them to cash when I asked for help. Kitty Hawk battle group backed Nerv in my final fight, but then ended up alongside WILLE. So, WILLE must not have been involved in the attack on headquarters. Coincidence or intel leak?

I wished I knew what happened after I was trapped in Unit One. Had Clark's fleet joined up because of the cause or because they had no other ports in which to weather the storm?

"Then maybe I should start," Becket said suddenly as he stood up. "I'm not going to pretend that I understand or am okay with most of this, but for the last twelve months I've felt like I was going insane. I kept seeing fantastic, amazing things. My head was filled with the names and the faces of people I'd never met... people who are around this table right now."

The room was hushed, it was not the hero's return that they had expected it to be. He was familiar enough with me though, was there a reason behind that? I wondered if a part of him remembered why he chose to die for me.

I found myself standing and clearing my throat. "And you came looking for answers. I don't know if I can alleviate your confusion or give purpose to what you've seen but..." I trailed off, looking for the words. I caught Miller out of the corner of my eye. I shook my head and took a breath.

The room was looking at me now, not all of them with pleasant expressions. Maybe it wasn't my place to speak, but maybe I didn't care. "Without being too poetic about it, you're wearing the face of a man who, in no uncertain terms, I owe my continued existence to. Maybe that doesn't hold true for everyone here, but the shock and glee everyone is feeling, that I am feeling is because it feels like our friend just came back from the dead and returned to us. I've missed you, we have missed you."

Misato stood abruptly, Rose a second later. Akagi joined, then Dennisovich, Miller, and Clark. The meeting hadn't been for intelligence gathering. Whatever it had been for, it didn't live up to it, instead it seemed to be solidarity.

And maybe, for a moment, I let myself stop feeling so guilty about his death. Faced with him standing in front of me I understood why Rae was so quick to accept Gypsy Rose as the same woman she'd lost; it was easy to lose yourself in a familiar face and believe it was the same person.

Rae could justify it, I could even justify it for her: Gypsy Rose remembered the life they had together, had the face to match, too. Becket looked the same, felt the same, but his memory was shadows.

Did he remember picking up a drunk, bitterly depressed girl up on the side of the road and taking her to get some food to put on top of the alcohol? Did he remember giving me my callsign?

To my side, Becket looked like he might run or pass out, fight or fall down. Did he remember the gun tucked against the small of my back? I wondered how that might go, wondered if I'd said the wrong thing, that I'd to drive him to it.

I knew that bastard was responsible for it. Was this his idea of a gift, a punishment, or some third option where he wasn't yet done fucking around with our lives?

My left hand spasmed and clenched into a fist so tight I felt the blood pooling in my palm. Had that bastard thrown Becket in front of the missile in the first place?

"You can stay here as long as you need to, use any of our resources to find the answers you're looking for. Rei explained it as well as any of us could have. If you're half the man we remember then you're worth the effort."

Victoria had said the words, the emotion behind them was true and from the heart. I did not envy her the emotional burden she must have been going through, though I did share in some of it. The wife that was never really hers back in her life, and the brother who, in this world, had never been her brother at all.

I felt his hand at the small of my back, still on top of my jacket, open palm against me. My right hand opened and I prepared myself to drop if that's what it came to. It would be a mess, Misato in the crossfire--

The hand slid up my back instead and gripped my shoulder. "If it's all the same," he started, "I need to borrow Iris. She might help me understand some things."

Victoria looked like she might object, her mouth opened about half way before an overly loud dropping of a notebook onto the table drew our attention. Miller was at the other end of that noise and he was giving her a look that could melt steel.

Clark cleared his throat and shrugged, "I imagine that will be just fine. She is not currently bound by any other duties, after all. We will revisit this in two days and see how everything is going then, shall we? Excellent. Meeting adjourned."

He waved his hand towards the door and shook his head. It had gotten away from him, but it had gotten away from everyone else too.

"Yes, that is acceptable. Stay on the ground, though, if you don't mind," Victoria finally said. She didn't look as happy about it as I would have liked. I couldn't imagine she was pleased with me overall, and perhaps she was upset he'd picked me over her.

But then, she should have remembered what path she had chosen all those years ago.

xxx​

The sunset and the salt air were a good companion to the cool Corona warming up in my right hand. Hard concrete and steel grid was a poor substitute for warm beach sand between my toes but the rhythmic crashing of the waves hundreds of feet below me had a way of making up for the loss.

Any excuse to wear a bathing suit was a welcome one, even if there wasn't a snowball's chance of my snow-white skin picking up a tan. It was a far cry from Victoria, who had a darker flesh tone than I'd ever had. Still, we did have our similarities and our taste in swim wear was the same: black and two piece.

"So," I started with a casual side-glance at Becket, or was it John now? Some people were always going to be known by their last names, I wondered if he'd be one of them.

"So," he answered back with a nod and a long drag on his bottle. The not-quite yellow liquid sloshed and sudded in the bottle as he tipped it back. It wasn't his first or his fifth, and I wasn't far behind him. He didn't have the biological advantages that I had but he was still holding on better than I was.

Not to say I was doing badly.

"So, I didn't think this was what you had in mind when you said you needed my help figuring things out."

He tossed his bottle off the edge of the platform and leaned back, laying down against the deck with his legs dangling off. "Most of the dreams, or I guess they are actually memories... Most of them are about you. Could have explained almost anything away, but that P-38 stands out too much; it doesn't make any sense... but there you are."

I nodded and tossed the rest of my mostly finished drink off the edge as well. "Chance came together in a weird way, for sure. Maybe I could have done it differently, maybe you didn't have to die."

He was silent for what felt like hours, just staring up into the sky, as I was, until the sun was all the way down. The stars came out and were little pinpricks of brilliance against the darkness. The view was amazing, more than anything I'd ever seen in Tokyo-3, or even before that. Out on the platform, with the lights off, we could see the galaxy.

"That was Alan Miller at the table wasn't it. Older, but that was him."

"Yep."

"Huh."

More delay, more stargazing. I could do it all night if I had to, even if it did start to get cold.

"That was you who flew the raid in Canton wasn't it?" He finally asked me. His voice was quieter, no hint of anger but no hint of intoxication either.

Canton, when we'd pulled Kaworu out. I didn't know how many died, didn't want to think about it so I'd gone out of my way not to find out.

Ayanami probably knew.

"Not a whole lot of Lightning's flying around these days." I answered without answering. Those were Americans I'd killed, his brothers in arms. His countrymen.

"I'm trying to figure it out. I wanted to get to know you outside of my memories. I wanted to try to reconcile you being worth dying for with you raiding that convoy. Men died." He sounded calm, but hurt, there was an edge under it.

"They had my friend captive. He'd done nothing wrong, but he's special. He's special like me. He can pilot Evangelion and... other things. It doesn't really matter, nobody was going to negotiate for him, nobody was going to trade for him. I had to get him out."

I started to sit up but I stopped, sighed, and slumped back onto the cooling deck plate. "I could tell you that I was trying to save the world or something else like that, and maybe we found some important intel about the Mark Nine... The truth is I couldn't leave him behind. Everyone in that convoy knew what their cargo was, they were all responsible for his situation."

He sat up and pulled his legs back onto the deck. I glanced over to see him looking down into the water. Part of me wondered if he wanted to toss me into it.

"If you were worth dying for, I suppose you'd be worth taking at your word." He shook his head and stood up, held his hand down to me. "Would you do it again?"

I took his hand and he pulled me up to my feet. I wobbled for a moment and then steadied myself. Maybe that alcohol had a bit more kick than I gave it credit for. "If I had to, I would. I've lost enough, I won't lose anymore. Would you do it again?" I asked him in return. I wasn't going to try to convince him I was worth it, either he'd see it or he wouldn't. I wouldn't be a different girl than the one he remembered. It would have to be good enough.


He turned away from me and started walking away, back towards the ladder leading down towards the main deck of the platform. His shoes clinked against the deck with each step and then stopped. He turned back towards me and walked the same number of steps back until he was next to me again.

"If it was worth it."
​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 46:

Unsteady​

The bottle slid from my half-numb fingertips and shattered against the tarmac, but I didn't care. It didn't matter because I had five more in my left hand, the bottle in my right had been empty, and my stomach had room for another case and a half.

If I pushed myself, and I saw no reason why I might not.

The middle of the night and I was wearing a bikini and drinking alone on a deserted unlit airstrip on a platform in the middle of the gulf and I didn't care. There wasn't anything to care about, not with thirteen beers down and five to go.

Any worries or doubts I had died five beers ago. Anything that was left would die five beers from now. I needed her back, or him... I had to wait for my ship to come in, find myself in the bed of an Angel or find myself in the bed of my Angel, alcohol guide me because I couldn't guide myself.

I didn't want to guide myself. I had a startling tendency to guide myself wrong. Sure, I'd gotten Rae to where she needed to be, but that was just an excuse to get myself where I wanted to be. In her arms again, where I'd find absolution.

If she forgave my sins, I might accept the forgiveness and move forward with my life.

I snapped the pry-top cap off with the brass ring holding the two halves of my top together and tipped the bottle against my lips. Half-cold malty stout poured down my throat fast enough that I only barely tasted it.

Drinking for flavor died seven beers ago; tasting it at all died four beers after that.

Becket had gone, but that was fine, he had his own answers to seek and his own people with whom to speak. I had my loneliness and a six pack of Guinness, miles of trouble and a rooftop view of the stars.

I'd once dreamed of traveling out to the stars, leaving the world behind and finding a new one out there, one without the hurt and the pain, one without the smell of cheap Japanese beer on the breath of a man I was meant to trust.

And that's why I made my wish, that I'd forget and be stronger. For a minute I even was, but when it came back to it I was always going to be Rei Ikari, and I was always going to be broken. Sometimes, I didn't have to feel that way.

"You're trashed. What the hell are you doing up here?"

I hadn't heard the footsteps, but if I had, I would have heard all six pairs of them. At least, that's nearly how blurry the woman was. "Misato! Get... The fuck over here!" I yelled at her as I hucked the empty bottle into the air.

The crash of the glass bottle exploding and the sound of her angry footsteps echoed together in a not-entirely unpleasant cacophony of alcohol addled sensory input, and I was not displeased. I found myself sucking on my teeth, waiting for her to get close enough that I could really see her. Time and stress had left their mark but... up close...

I felt her hand on my shoulder, the grip was tighter than it needed to be, but not the tightest it had ever been. She was angry with me, but if anything that proved to me that she still cared. I had never stopped waiting, never stopped wanting. Now, if it was only this...

It wouldn't be enough.

"Why are you doing this? I thought you got over this!" She yelled at me. Maybe I was supposed to have, it wasn't the first time I'd done this, wasn't the second either. I wondered if she knew about the drink I'd stolen from his flask before she'd picked me up the very first time, before I woke up having forgotten myself in the passenger seat of her car.

I shook my head a little harder than I needed to and nearly fell down. "No, why aren't you? If you want me to stop you're going to have to drink 'em before I get to them!" A more clever or foolproof plan, not a man alive could make.

My bottles clanked together when she snatched one out of the pack and pried the top off with the corner of a handheld radio. She was still a professional, even after all this time. Maybe she needed the drink more than I did; I watched her put the bottle away faster than I was, and I wasn't being terribly slow about it.

I stumbled and transitioned from standing to sitting in a half-intentional stumble that bruised my ego and my ass. The beer bottles clanked against the bottom of the half-empty six pack but didn't break, a small miracle but not an unwelcome one.

"You know, I've missed you."

She looked over at me, her mouth had curled into a frown at my words. Would she have expected me to feel any differently? It felt like an eternity had come between us and...

"I don't know what you want me to say, Rei."

I fell over onto my back and stared up into the sky. Clear, perfect sky. Such a stark contrast to the way I was feeling, but then nobody drank till they couldn't walk because they were happy. But then, even just being this close to her...

"I want you to say how you feel."

"How I feel?" She sat down on the deck next to me and pulled another bottle out of the cardboard sleeve. "I feel like I wish you'd never left, that you'd never omitted. I feel like I wish I could go back and do it differently, do it right. I feel like..."

"You miss me too?"

I heard her lay against the deck next to me and I turned my head to look over at her. I could see the marks that time had left, but that didn't matter as much as the fact that she was there with me. She was the same... same enough, she was the woman I'd missed, the one I couldn't live without, the one I had found my way back to.

"Yes, I do."

My lips felt dry, dry as my mouth and my throat. Everything I'd wanted to hear, possibility stretched out in front of me, I just had to...

"So stop missing me."

I reached out to grab her hand. She didn't pull away but she didn't return my squeeze. My heart was pounding in my chest, my blood rushing in my ears.

"It's not that simple, Rei."

Her voice hitched, just a little. Just enough to notice, just enough to give me hope. I squeezed her hand in mine and blinked my eyes hard and swallowed against the lump in my throat. So close, so far. So many different possibilities. Alcohol and fear, loneliness. Eternity laid out before me and...

Grand romantic gestures worked in movies, worked in books and television but in the real world nothing really made up for the moments in-between, the ones where relationships thrived or failed in the everyday grind of life.

The parts where secrets and lies poisoned the well and love turned into jealousy and resentment and anger and betrayal. Maybe I'd failed her before, I'd caused her pain, and she'd caused pain back. I could forgive, I could try to forget. If I could hold onto her hand forever, if I could stretch this moment out and forget everything else...

I'd give up eternity just to push back the sunrise for another hour, just a little more time to stay here and keep the world from catching up to us. I could pretend that everything in between had never happened and we were together like we were back then.

I felt a tear roll down my cheek and her hand twitched in mine, squeezed gently around my fingers. That spark of hope in my heart blossomed into a fire. The adrenaline rush of possibility coursed through my veins.

I pushed the cardboard case away from me with my left hand, heard the bottles roll out against the steel decking as I turned over on my right side and pushed myself up on shaky limbs. She was next to and below me.

I smiled through the tears as my eyes met hers, and her lip curled up into a smile. Alcoholic courage and desperation boiled over, maybe, we could have this one night.

"Yes, it is."

I leaned in, faltered, but she caught me. Our lips touched and everything I'd been missing came back to me, for that moment.

I closed my eyes to force the tears away, to lose myself in the moment.

An eternity later, an eternity too soon, the kiss ended and I fell against her side, my head against her chest.

I ran my tongue against my lip and put my arm around her, held her close.

You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be...

And I don't wanna go home right now.

xxx​

Angelic heritage and the metabolic cheating that this entailed did not protect me from the consequences of my actions, at least not in any way that I could discern. Standing in the direct sunlight made my headache anything but better, but I couldn't bring myself to regret the way the night had ended.

An hour of sleep and a quick shower, borrowed clothes and a hurried transit to the sub-pen punctuated my morning. I couldn't believe she'd kept the jacket for all those years, but I could believe it more than when she let me wear it.

And of course, it didn't work without that skirt.

I tried not to dwell too much on what it might mean that she'd dressed me entirely in her own clothing, other than that my own was on the other end of the platform from where our night had turned into morning, and I could hardly traverse the base wearing nothing.

I'd be dragging ass all day, but at least I was sure to get a good night's sleep afterwards, and to be fair a day of my brain not quite turning on was a worthy price to pay.

The hatch on the submarine's sail opened up and a gang-plank extended onto the upper hull. Ayanami and her entourage were back from the mainland and Misato and I were the only ones there to greet her.

The first person off the submarine was a Marine, or whatever WILLE's equivalent was. He was holding a sub-machine gun at low ready and had his safety off and his finger at the edge of the trigger guard. He looked tense and I was driven to wonder if he was protecting Ayanami or if his role was more nefarious.

The hair stood up on my neck and the smell of ozone greeted an electric tingle against my tongue. I didn't have my gun on me, but if someone had hurt Ayanami I wouldn't need one, I could feel that. My emotions weren't in check and my angelic gift wasn't far behind.

Emotional high and a predisposition to make rash decisions. There wasn't any possible way in which I screwed this up.

Next out of the hatch was Mari, who looked a little worn thin. I couldn't imagine she'd had a fun time of it after I'd taken off, to say nothing of the mission itself. I couldn't read her expression, or figure out what the look she gave me when she caught me looking at her meant.

Kaworu came out next, and, at least he looked better than he had the last time I'd seen him. He still looked more occupied with his feet than anything else. He wasn't in chains as he had been with the Americans, but it wasn't like he knew the WILLE people as anything other than the people fighting NERV.

The clone 'Rogue' came out next. Possibly the oldest 'friend' that Kaworu had, for whatever value of friendship she could provide. She was still in combat mode. He eyes were scanning everything. If things went sideways on us, I could count on her to bring her own violence to the party.

If I was lucky, she wouldn't go off before it was necessary. I didn't know her well enough on a personal level, but we were made out of the same meat so at least I knew what she was capable of.

I glanced down at my left hand. I wasn't really even myself anymore. Hair dye, contact lenses, they could get my close, but even looking in the mirror with those changes...

A man in a flightsuit was next out of the hatch. His uniform was dry, but salt crusted, like he'd been in the gulf and allowed to dry without rinsing. American flag shoulder patch, this was the pilot that had been shot down.

I didn't need to read his nametape; I already knew what it would say. I'd seen his face before, or one that looked just like it. It made sense, for as much as our worlds were different, they were still the same. Key events had changed, but other less world altering details would have played out almost identically in both worlds.

Which meant that I knew this pilot, or I had known him once before. Maybe it was nostalgia or sentimentality that made me glad he'd managed to punch out, or maybe it was a desire not to shed blood that didn't need to be shed.

In either case, the result was the same; standing on the deck in front of me, in handcuffs and covered in dried salt, was Alan Miller.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 47:
One Last ____​

In one moment I was looking into the eyes of Rei Ayanami, who was standing on the gang-plank leading from the submarine. In the next moment it felt like I had a nosebleed and my eyes rolled back in my head, a moment before I crashed into the decking.

The smell of ozone reached my nostrils with the taste of blood and salt on my tongue. The ache of the bruises on my body was dull compared to the shrilling in my ears, a whine or a scream, too high in pitch and intensity for my ears to handle, the bones just resonated, like speakers turned up too loud and blown out, a buzzing.

And then it was over, but for a sickness deep in the pit of my stomach. My eyes re-opened to see I was not the only person on the ground; everyone else was in a similar state, knocked to the ground as though the legs were cut out from under them.

I looked back towards the submarine and locked eyes with Ayanami. Blood was dripping from the corners of her eyes, her nose, her ears, her mouth. She looked how I felt, and when I wiped my own cheek the hand came back red.

Rogue was bleeding in similar fashion, as was Kaworu, but the normal humans weren't. Nothing about that fact made me feel any better. If we were wounded so, it meant whatever happened had to be special in origin. The kind of special you threw Evangelions at until it stopped moving.

The alarms on the platform started to scream, but that was only a passing distraction, my attention was drawn upwards, towards the blood red sky.

I spit my blood onto the deck and pushed myself back to my feet. The world was going to hell, but at least I was vindicated. "Hey, Miller!" I yelled with a shakiness in my voice that I hadn't intended.

The handcuffed man's head jerked towards me, he probably didn't expect me to know his name, did he know I was the one who he tried to kill? He was about to.

"I'm the one you tried to shoot down! This is what I was trying to prevent, when we attacked that convoy! This is what your people did and it's going to get worse before it gets better!" I yelled at the man over the growing roaring of the wind.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see Misato clinging to a handrail with her left arm, and holding a radio up with her right hand. "Prepare the Wunder for immediate departure, we're going into battle!"

The deck pitched under us and I almost fell over in my surprise. The sea state was rapidly deteriorating, was this was second impact felt like? The look on Misato's face was one of recognition, not good.

I lurched and stumbled across the deck to get to the lift that would take us back up to the main deck of the platform and away from waves that were threatening to crash over the deck and knock us all into the ocean.

The deck pitched again and I started to lose my footing and crashed against a handrail. Half inch angle iron was the only thing stopping me from getting washed away to my death. Back the other direction the gang plank was hanging free while the Dallas desperately tried to pull distance from the platform. They'd probably crash-drive to get under the 'weather' to avoid crashing into us.

The world dropped out from under me with a loud snap; the rigging holding this gantry to the leg of the main platform fractured and fell out from under me. The deck fell to a forty-five degree angle and I bounced along the grating before crashing into and tumbling over the railing.

A strong hand wrapped around my wrist and nearly wrenched my shoulder out of socket arresting my fall. I flailed about to get a grip on the handrail with my free hand and got a good look at the hand holding me up. A man's hand with a handcuff around the wrist, with the other half of the pair empty.

The man heaved me back up onto the deck and we climbed together towards the elevator car. His other hand, I saw, was bleeding. He'd slipped the cuffs. This other Miller had slipped his cuffs and, looking at his other hand, broke his thumb.

And he'd saved me?

I hauled myself into the elevator car where the rest of the group was already waiting, The door closed and, for a moment at least, the roaring of the wind and sea was calmed. The car lurched under me and I felt myself nearly falling again. Two hands grabbed onto me, one from Miller, the other... Rogue? She had a stern look on her face and I could tell where she'd wiped her blood away.

I turned towards Misato and I could see the fear in her eyes and it terrified me. "Misato, is this...?"

"It feels just like Second Impact. I can't escape it..." She muttered under her breath.

I wrapped my hand around hers and shook my head, I'd give her what comfort I could. "We've got Evangelions this time. We'll end this before it starts. We've got power, we can do something about it."

The elevator halted abruptly at the top of the shaft and I felt almost like I came off my feet for a second before the doors opened up.

Outside was the main flight deck of the platform, and we managed to catch sight of three Raptors running full after burner, blasting down the runway in formation. With this kind of wind sheer they were insane, but apparently motivated.

"Who authorized that launch?" Misato asked into her radio. Her voice was shaky, nervous. I'd never seen her like this before.

"Miller and, er, both Beckets launched under their own authority."

"Fair enough. Tell Denisovich and Clark that I'm authorizing nuclear deployment. Ending this threat at any cost is our only priority." She was colder, calmer, more determined. The edge was back, she didn't sound quite like a scared little girl.

Victoria had taken the only action she really could, at least the only one she felt most confident in. She'd be a stick jockey till the day she died, and that might be today.

A gust of wind threatened to lift me off the deck and cast me into the sea, but I kept my footing, then grabbed onto the railing next to the elevator. How we were going to cross that wide open space I didn't know.

"It's getting rough out here, status on Wunder deployment?" Misato asked as she retreated into the shelter that the elevator provided.

"Wunder is online. Sit tight, we'll come to you." a different voice from before called back. Feminine, familiar but I couldn't place it.

The whine of engines scratched in at the edge of my hearing and grew stronger, rapidly. Diagonally from us I saw the form of a hull rise up above the edge of the decking, the Wunder. The ship moved gracefully through the air despite the chaos around us.

A testament both to her power and her origin.

The starboard Eva-bay opened up as the ship passed low overhead and a long red arm reached down out of it and pressed down, gently, to the deck. "That's definitely a way of boarding the ship."

xxx​

For every bit of grace the Wunder had displayed in aligning with the deck to pick us up off the platform, it tore away from that platform as though it had the hounds of hell on its heels. Acceleration that couldn't have been rivaled by a fighter jet running full afterburners knocked me into the wall and the railing was the only thing that kept me in place.

A glance to my side showed that Miller was the only other person to have such a reaction to the burst of speed, Mari, Misato, Ayanami, and the clone held themselves up with far more elegance and grace than I had.

But then they'd all probably had more experience with it than I had. I hadn't set foot on this ship since before fourth impact.

After a few harsh moments the acceleration died down, though I had no doubt that we were supersonic by that point. I would have loved to have been strapped in. The respite from the lateral force had given me a chance to catch my breath, for which I was thankful.

I heard the click of the button on the side of Misato's hand radio and her voice a moment later, strained. "Situation report?"

The voice that came through was rushed, familiar. "The readings match thirty years ago. Pattern blue. We're witnessing an impact event."

The color drained from Misato's face and I understood how she felt. It was confirmed now, even if she had already known what was happening. Even if I already knew what was happening. This was the only home any of us had left.

Mari dropped into a sprint before anyone had a chance to stop her or say anything, likely headed to he Evangelion in one of the cages that this ship had installed in it. I could have run too, run for the hanger, for that last raptor, maybe?

But what the hell would I have been able to do with that?

I couldn't use Unit One, they'd never let me have it. Never disengage it from serving as the ship's control node. I couldn't just sit around while the world ended and not do anything about it, no more than Misato could.

I glanced over; Miller was afraid. Even if I was certain he didn't understand the full implications of what was going on, I knew that much. The people who'd casually swatted him from the sky were terrified and that was probably enough.

The clone, Rogue, couldn't be trusted, even if she had eventually done the right thing. They didn't know her, I certainly didn't either. Same with Kaworu, even if he hadn't been rushed straight to medical after we'd boarded the Wunder.

That left me and Ayanami, and Ayanami wouldn't pilot, not after the last time.

The lift opposite us finally opened; it would take us to the command deck. Misato was the first in, followed by Miller, then Ayanami and Rogue. I found myself... hesitating.

I'd lost her before, I might have gotten her back, but if everyone died anyway, if she died...

"Ikari?" Ayanami asked, her hand extended towards me. To the command deck, right?

I looked down at my own left hand, the first part of me that wasn't really me. I could fight in a way that few others could, and even fewer would. "Ayanami, I'm trusting you to keep an eye on her. Misato, I'm taking Unit Zero."

Misato's face twitched, her mouth opened and closed a few times before she seemed to settle on something to actually say. "Fine, Bay 3, port side."

I blinked in surprise. "Just like that?"

"We don't have time for an argument that I'll lose anyway. Go, we'll provide direction from here." She tossed her radio to me as the lift doors started to close. "Don't let me down."

I stared down into my left hand, the one I'd caught the radio with. Just like that then, when it came down to it, she chose to put her faith in me. All of this time I'd spent wondering who I was, what I was supposed to be and what I was going to end up being, she provided my answer.

My left foot pounded after the right, I dropped into a run towards Unit Zero. Ayanami's unit, and, for a brief glorious moment, Rogue's. If I could make her move for me... I might just have a shot.

I rounded the first corner fast enough that I slid up against the wall, but I didn't let it slow me down. Every nanosecond counted when it came to an impact event. Whatever the Americans had done, they'd woken a Vessel of Adam. I wasn't certain what that meant, but I was certain that the situation we found ourselves in meant that wasn't just a fancy name they'd made up.

"Ikari, we're passing into American airspace now. Pre-checks are in progress, technicians are waiting for you at the plug. We're only going to be able to provide limited support, so if you want to back out now is the time."

I finally recognized the voice. I felt a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. "Thanks for the heads-up, Akagi. I'll take my chances."

Five, maybe ten meters ahead the blast door separating this corridor from the Evangelion storage pods on the port side of the ship was opening for me.

In the last few steps before crossing the threshold, the ship tilted under me and I sprawled forward off of my feet. The radio launched out of my hand as I scrambled to keep from landing directly onto my face.

I managed to catch the deck plate with my shoulder and slid past the blast-doors on my back, just in time to see the pink of Unit Eight disappear over the edge of its side of the pod and into the air stream. That must have been the source of the lurch.

On the opposite side of the bay, Unit Zero was laying face down in a pool of coolant, with the entry plug extended. The oldest Evangelion, and the most buggy. Taking it into combat was an exercise in suicide, but then I'd been in a dogfight against fighter jets in a P-38, and this wasn't that bad.

A technician I didn't recognize helped me to my feet and peeled my jacket off of me. He could have asked, and might have, but I didn't hear him over the sound of the wind rushing past the open bay. The implication was obvious: I had to be ready to pilot.

I kicked my shoes off as I walked across the catwalks crisscrossing the bay, each of them looked retractable so I shouldn't have any trouble launching afterwards, anyway. Ahead of me two female technicians were working around the boarding hatch on the side of the plug, one of them had a folded up package that, I assumed, was a plugsuit.

My skirt hit the floor around the same time I felt someone press A-10 connectors against my scalp, and the familiar tingle of them interfacing with my brain. That I managed not to trip myself stepping out of the a-line was a miracle in and of itself given the speed at which we were walking, but I managed.

The tech closest to the hatch handed me the folded plugsuit and gave me a thumbs up and a pat on the shoulder, and I took it with me into the plug. It smelled old, stale. They hadn't planned on using this unit again.

They probably wouldn't use it again after this.

I peeled my shirt and undergarments off and tossed them out of the open hatch a moment before it sealed. We were clearly not wasting any time. I grabbed the plugsuit by the shoulders and shook it out and started to climb into it in the dark. I'd done it enough times, I didn't need to see to do it.

I was half way into the suit when the plug lurched forward and started screwing down into the unit. By the time it locked into place I had my fingertips pressed against the wrist activation switch and an instant later the loose garment was the skin-tight suit it was meant to be.

The lights came on a second later when main power was finally connected. The saddle was as I remembered it. I caught sight of my hand when I reached out to grab onto the control stick and pull myself up.

Canary yellow. My old colors. Despite the situation, I smiled from ear to ear. If she'd had this made, it meant she had always held out hope, for me, for us. She knew she'd see me again. It gave me hope.

We were going to win.

I hefted myself up and into the saddle while LCL poured into end of the plug from the filtration vents. If everything went okay, I'd be online in a couple minutes at the most. I tapped out a series of memorized commands into the controls set into the back of the control yokes, brought what I could online; sensors, communications, power management, fire control.

The first breath of LCL hit me with a wave of nostalgia. Memories, sensations, smells. Ayanami from a lifetime ago. Problems may have been bigger but they seemed to much more manageable back then. Sure, I'd been afraid, but I'd known we could do it, and she'd been there for me. They both had.

She'd never have to do this again, I'd do it for her. I would protect Ayanami, Misato, Asuka, even Mari. That's what he had charged me with. He was a bastard but he was right. He'd always been right. Just like Father.

An electric shock ran down my spine and the colors of the plug walls swirled until the interior of the pod filled my vision. Activation success, synchronization was online, according to my readouts, at eighty percent.

"Good, it still works. You've got twenty minutes in the extended batteries after you disengage from the ship. After that you've got your standard five minute timer. We'll supply recharge packages if we can, but don't rely on them. Get this done fast."

I jerked my head towards the voice, Akagi's face was in the vidcom window. She looked older, but she still looked good. She looked less... defeated, than she had before. She was going to need that.

I nodded at her and grabbed onto the controls. This was, after all, a fine way to die. A hero's ending if there ever was one; I'd already gotten the girl. "Pilot Ikari, Unit Zero. Ready to go."
​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 48:
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

​

Allusions to horror and devastation came to mind, terror and mayhem, a sort of ordered chaos. In the moment, anything more eloquent than the obvious was out of reach; the visage of the wounded earth saw to that.

It would have made sense that they wouldn't have taken it far from where they found it. Hard to hide something that size, even harder to move it. This wasn't something that anyone could forget or forgive, even if we won.

Where once stood New Orleans, now stood scorched earth and a giant with wings of light and glowing eyes. The number of people who must have died in that one instant left a deep sickness in my stomach. Entirely avoidable deaths, if only they hadn't meddled with things beyond their understanding.

The hull of the Wunder shook under my feet, the shaft of the lance vibrated in my hands, pressed against the same hull. Range was a few kilometers, I could see Unit Two and Unit Eight drawing close to the target.

Three on one would normally have filled me with confidence, but something about this tickled the deep reptilian, fearful, part of my brain. I needed to kill it, I needed to be on the other side of the planet from it.

I clicked the control on the back of my yoke and ejected the umbilical tying me to the ship. The counter flipped over to twenty minutes. That would have to be enough.

"Ikari to Wunder. I'm dropping now, tap the brakes a little for me."

I felt the muscles in the legs tense up, and then the tension released and I was off the hull. Under me the Wunder slowed just enough to cast me out ahead of it, and then it turned away from the intercept course it had been on with... whatever waited for me below.

The altitude on my display clicked down rapidly, minute to live be damned. Forward velocity exceeded my drop rate by a factor of ten; I was going to hit the ground running. Two thousand, one thousand, five hundred. Braking thrusters fired. I hit the ground on my right foot and pushed off, carried to the left. Right, left, right left.

Speed across the ground rose and I brought the spear to my side. Target ahead, if I could pull off a one-hitter-quitter we'd be done. Asuka and Mari were more cautious than I was, they'd dropped earlier and approached with restraint.

I'd already been dead once, I could do it again.

Unit Zero had never been the strongest, the fastest, or the most agile Evangelion. I had to push her as hard as I could, but I wouldn't stop. The Mark Nine was looking directly at me with those glowing eyes and that cracked armor.

A tingle on the back of my neck, a flinch. I jumped on instinct a moment before an energy blast tore through the space I'd just been occupying. The arc of my jump carried me down on top of it, and I brought the point of my lance down directly into the chest armor. The blade sank deep and for a moment I felt victorious.

I was back in the air in a second, my chest felt like fire, the wind was knocked out of me. I hit the ground on my knee and managed to keep my head up as I slid to a stop a full kilometer away from the target.

The force of the strike that hit me had stripped the armor from the being in front of me, revealing what had always necessarily been true; it was more than an Evangelion, more than a Vessel of Adams. It was a giant of light.

A red streak sprinted in from my left, Unit Two. I needed a minute to collect myself, but I still had my lance. The point to point comm linked up and I flipped my grip around on the lance. "Asuka, catch!"

I tossed the lance into her path, with luck she'd catch it and have another chance to impale the thing, for what good it might do. We still had to try.

I was half way to my feet when rapid fire tracers started impacting the giant of light, fired from Unit Eight no doubt. I engaged both progressive knives and pulled them into my hands and found my way back to my feet. A little worse for wear, nothing I couldn't handle.

A flash of red caught my attention, Unit Two was tossed away. "I guess that means I'm tagged in," I muttered to nobody in particular, then dropped into a sprint. Five hundred yards, four hundred. I was in the air and off my feet again, an AT field stronger than anything I'd ever seen popped up and threw me backwards.

We were annoying it.

Massive tracer rounds lanced in from a steep angle from above. The screaming of the Wunder's engines pierced my entry plug and a moment later the massive ship collided with the AT field of the monster and eroded it.

The Adam fired a blast through the belly of the ship and out through one dishes on its back. Explosions and smoke poured through the wound. It could take out something that big and powerful? No it truly was an Adam if it could do that.

"We're losing power, we're going down. Primary control node is disengaging. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday--" The transmission was cut off by static. Misato, Ayanami!

No, no, no! On the ground they'd be helpless, I couldn't let this go on any longer. I had fifteen minutes of power left, I'd have to do it in five.

It was insane, dangerous. Zero was already unstable, but I had to risk it. The final card in my hand. I'd seen it done before, how hard could it really be?

I reached down to the MFD set into the control saddle and rolled through the menus until I found the one I needed. In autonomous operation mode, without a control center, I had the ability to do this without authorization.

I opened a broadcast to anyone still listening, they should be warned in case this didn't go the way I needed it to. "This is Pilot Ikari, Unit Zero. Be advised, I am disengaging all of my limiters."

That would have to do. I pressed my finger down on the execute button and held on as explosive bolts fired all over the Evangelion. I could feel plugs and bolts and restraints pulling and tearing themselves from the Evangelion as if it were my own flesh. I could feel muscles shifting as braces and armor plating pulled free.

It wasn't the worst thing I'd ever felt.

The power monitor dropped from fifteen minutes down to five when the external battery packs disengaged along with the armor that held them. From five minutes to an error message. Of course, she was unshackled now.

I felt the Eva pushing in on my mind and I pushed back. Just a few more minutes, that's all I need from you.

I dropped down into a crouch and launched myself with all of my might towards the Adam. An AT field rose to stop me and I screamed and tore at it, forced my way through the first layer, the second, the third. I fed my rage into the Eva and she fed hers into me. Two vicious beasts, uncaged together.

The final layer was down, both knives thrust forward with the force of all of my desperation behind them, buried to the hilt into the giant. There was a hesitation in its movement. I, for a moment, could let myself believe I'd really won.

A burning grip wrapped itself around my right forearm, a blow to my chest afterwards sent me sprawling. The warning messages flashing on my displays and the agony in my right elbow told me what I needed to know; the limb was removed from the Evangelion.

I hit the ground in a heap and didn't find it within myself to move from that position. This was what it was like to fight in Zero. Nothing else, nothing left under the surface like unit One.

The dust around me settled and I saw Unit Two making a valiant effort to put the behemoth down once and for all. She was doing better that I had been, actually parrying blows with the lance, but she was losing ground, getting pushed towards me.

Only a few dozen meters at a time, but they were adding up. Tracers kept impacting the glowing giant, to no effect. The anti-AT field rounds fired by Unit Eight weren't up to the task, it seemed. I couldn't get up to fight, Zero had taken too much damage. I could feel my sync failing.

I still had my own AT field, but I couldn't imagine it would be strong enough to fight on foot. Nor was it reliable enough. Still...

I punched the shutdown sequence into the MFD and set the plug to eject. The seat slowly withdrew backwards while the monitors went dark and the tickling at the back of my brain faded away. I pulled myself out of the seat while the feeling returned to the arm I hadn't actually lost. The cushion pulled away to reveal the air-tight sealed SERE kit.

The plug hit the end of its travel and the LCL purge started, as soon as the the level dropped below the seat I coughed the liquid out of my lungs and tore the plastic bag open.

A SIG pistol, and a knife. There were rations, a medical kit, but I didn't need those. I grabbed the two weapons and kicked the hatch open. Hot air rushed in and I climbed out onto the top of the plug.

I climbed to my feet and looked up at the way-too-close giant of light and held out my pistol. "God, or whoever might be listening. I could really use a miracle about now. I've got nothing left, so if you could throw me a bone I'll... try to be better."

To my left Unit Two was on the ground. She was trying to get up, but the bleeding told me she'd taken more than her fair share of hits. Unit Eight wasn't a close combat unit, and she was too far away to help anyway.

I squeezed the trigger, then again, and again, and again. The report of the pistol was almost silent over the roaring in my ears, and the magazine was quickly empty. The giant of light stared at me with what could almost be considered curiosity. I'm sure he could tell what I was, even if my bullets had done nothing.

But I'd killed an Angel that way before. I had to hope.

The plug started to shake under me and above me the giant pulled its fist back as though to wipe me out of existence once and for all. I'd died before, I could do it again. I could only hope that whatever distraction I could provide would be enough to give everyone else a chance to do something.

In a way it was calming, knowing I wouldn't have to worry much longer, that I'd done all I could. I felt the wind blowing in my face in front of the massive fist that was headed down towards me. The shaking intensified under me. There were worse ways to go.

A purple hand wrapped around the glowing fist of light and stopped it in place, then pushed it back. Slowly at first, but then faster, with a follow up from a second purple hand that sent the giant sprawling. The first ground it had been forced to cede in the entire fight.

My miracle, Unit One.



​

 

[Mr. Tebbs]

well, holy shit. (√(-1))²


It just got real

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 49:
Unbound

​

I could not, despite my vow, leave her to her fate. Not now, not ever. It would be worse than what I'd been forced to endure when we'd piloted together. Worse than the not-knowing if I'd see her again. Worse than leaving him behind.

Unit One was familiar to me in a way that I could not quite put my finger on. She welcomed me into her heart with open arms, she understood my purpose and willed to share in it. A purpose free of obligation, of my own decision.

Not because I had to, not because I was ordered to, not because I could do it.

The Adam was getting up, I didn't have time to idle. I looked over my shoulder, Ikari was standing on the plug of the damaged Unit Zero. She was reaching out, she expected... something that was not to be. She had done enough, this purpose was no longer hers.

"Ikari, stand back. I will finish this for you, because I want to."

My steps were calm and purposeful towards the Adam, the Progenitor Awakening. Of all of the Angels and Evangelions that had been, he had no equal among gods nor men. The power to create or destroy life was absolute, beyond contestation.

I would not let that hold true. Things had a certain clarity when I was synced to Unit One. Some part of me that had been too silent for too long. A part of me that I hadn't known I'd been missing. Ikari must have felt it, that must have been what allowed her to do so much with this unit.

I fell into instinct, raised my arm as the Adam rose from the ground. The shaft of Unit Zero's lance connected with my outstretched hand and I snatched it from the air. Controls forward, will to movement, I leapt and thrust the spear in one motion.

He knew what I was doing, and he knew what I was. I could feel recognition from it. The feeling was mutual. He parried my thrust and shattered the blade of the lance in one blow. I released the broken shaft and ducked low, raised a fist up from under and delivered a crushing blow to his head.

He wasn't used to being forced to cede ground. A left hook, a right hook. A kick to the knee. Each blow drove him further back, drove him down. Still, with each strike he seemed to recover faster, to move and counter attack faster.

I took a hit on the chin and retaliated with a kick to the chest, knocked us apart only to launch myself back against him. Punching, kicking, pulling, tearing. Feral violence, I let me hate and revulsion drive me. He was not the same as me, I would not let him live.

I felt my link to Unit One deepening as I had to push harder, move faster, react quicker. He could not knock me off balance but I was increasingly unable to do the same to him. I knew that I would not reach my limits first, I would force him to ground and end this threat.

I didn't bother to look, I could feel my sync climbing. I knew contamination would come soon, but I did not care. I felt more alive than I had ever felt. This was my decision, this was my genuine desire, my need. This was worth it.

I moved faster, supersonic punches, parries, evasions. I pushed him further and further from the crippled Unit Zero, further from the one I wanted to protect.

Deeper and deeper, I could feel the armor plating hanging from the Evangelion's limbs, I could feel the blood in its veins, I could feel--

Everything.

My armor was restrictive, I cast it aside. Steel plates and wires and bolts dropped to the ground, I wouldn't need them. My skin felt the sunlight, the wind, the warmth. I felt the energy coursing through my body, crackling just under the skin.

I raised my left arm and fired an energy blast into the Adam's head. Then another, then another. With each attack I fell deeper, deeper, deeper. Seeing not through a display, but through my eyes. Hearing through my ears.

I grabbed him, pulled him in front of me and held him at arms length. We left the ground together, rose towards the sky. This had been his objective. To end what he hadn't begun. To begin again on his own.

The armor over my face disintegrated and I could feel the wind and sunlight on my face for the first time. Finally bare of confinement, my true form for the first time in... ages.

The copy, the pale imitation of the being I was going to consume to fuel this re-imaging of the world, lay on the ground below me, with another copy standing atop it, watching me with...

Fear.

No. Something inside, deep in my core fought back against that. No, she shouldn't be made to be afraid. This was... This was for her, for me. This was wrong. Instinct was wrong, there was memory, there were bonds, relationships. Love.

Duty, obligation, empathy.

I couldn't forget what I'd never known, but I did, I was whole and incomplete.

"This has to stop."

Words, not mine, not hers. From something else within?

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. I violated this law of the universe, as it was understood. Matter and energy were two sides of the same coin, the amount of both was fixed, but each could change form.

No, it wasn't a stray thought, it was a message, from within. A suggestion? A request.

There was enough mass to do what needed to be done.

I collected myself, I collected that other... self?

That could be dealt with afterwards.

I would destroy this being, because Rei Ayanami wanted to.

I raised my right arm, closed my eyes. Matter converted to directed energy, I let my world explode.



​

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 50:
New Eden

​

I knew what was going to happen. I could feel it in my bones. Unit One had changed, cast off its armor, ascended to the sky and... become Ayanami. Every bit as large as the giant of light, the unmistakable form of a woman, with her own soft white glow and flowing hair.

What she'd become, what she'd been, it all seemed to come together. She was evolving or... returning to her complete form. I didn't know, it didn't matter. The despair must have been radiating off of me. This isn't what I had wanted.

She'd taken it too far, let herself sink too deep into the Eva. The impact would continue, we'd all die, and something else would come out the other side.

She looked down at me and her face seemed to curl into a frown. The glow dimmed, and she held out her right arm to the chest of the Adam. The glow returned, intensified. The plug under my feet shook. "I guess this is the end, after all."

The light grew, and grew... and disappeared. My eyes adjusted in an instant, I was covered by a wall of red. Armor, plate armor. Unit Two was shielding me.

A whip-crack followed by a deep roaring blast deafened me, but my protector, Unit Two, held strong. The blast wave washed out around us, sandblasting the ground and overturning any debris left from the city's destruction.

I could taste the electricity on the air, feel something chipping away at my AT field, digging into me, pushing through and past me, into the earth. I could feel my nose bleeding, I could see the red splatters against the white plug surface when I looked down.

It looked even redder as it rushed up to me.
​

xxx

​

I woke up on the surface of the plug with my face resting in a pool of my own blood. I didn't know how long I'd been down, but the sun was up and Unit Two was gone. In its place were... tree tops. That wasn't there before.

I pushed myself onto my feet and checked the magazine of the pistol I still had in my hand. Empty, so I swapped it out for a spare from the SERE kit. If I hadn't been found yet, it was only a matter of time, unless somehow I wasn't in Louisiana anymore.

Unit Zero was in a kneeling position, rather than the sprawled out position it had been in when I'd de-activated. The missing limb was replaced as well. Something was not adding up. How much time had passed?

I heard rotors chopping through the air in the distance. Close enough to hear, though. I couldn't see them, too many tree tops in the way. If there was any power left in the batteries, the radio in the plug would work.

I slid down the side of the plug and caught my foot on the still-open hatch, then slid myself inside. The saddle was how I'd left it, so I re-mounted and started punching commands into the MFD. A menu. At least it had power.

A clunk to my left told me that the hatch had closed, the rising sensation in my stomach told me the plug was screwing in. Orange LCL began to pool in the front of the plug. I hadn't commanded an activation, but if the telemetry links were online to Wunder than they could have commanded it once they saw me fiddling with the controls inside.

Or it was trying to eat me.

It might have looked fine on the outside, but most of my armor was still missing and, with the thrashing I'd taken, there was no guarantee it'd fire up anyway.

Ayanami blew herself up.

Somehow, I always knew it as going to end that way. From the first time I ever saw Evangelion, to the fight against Ramiel. Somehow, I always knew she was going to die for me.

I felt a sickness rising in my throat, I wanted to throw up, cry, scream, kill something. Anything or nothing, just to make the feeling stop.

It felt like a slap to the face, the colors in the plug swirled and resolved to the outside. The phantom limb sensations poured through my body, I was online, no power reading that I could see.

"--ing push them back then! They're not taking this ship! Wunder is the rally point!"

The communications array came online and the inbound transmission startled me. The Americans were fighting us now? Hadn't we lost enough? Hadn't they? Was a city and my sister not enough of a price to pay?

I pushed the Evangelion to its feet, if for no other reason than to get a better view of what was going on around me. With my head above the tree tops, I could see the crash site of the Wunder a few kilometers in front of me. Units Two and Eight were holding positions at either end, firing on advancing columns of armor.

It couldn't have been that long, or we'd have our navy at their doorstep. It didn't explain why Asuka had left me, but I'm sure she had her reasons. If they'd needed the help--

The sensor array chirped at me and an area of my forward display magnified for me, two IR readings a few dozen meters at the most in front of me. Two forms, one prone, the other hunched over the first. It would only be a few steps until I was close enough to get a better look.

I crouched low, back under the almost impossibly tall tree tops and advanced forward, clearing the distance in only a few moments, could have taken minutes on foot with the density of the underbrush. I toggled the infrared off and looked at the figures in visible light.

Two women, one of them was a brunette, and that was all I could really tell. The other... She had white hair. Ayanami? She couldn't have survived, and yet... if it wasn't her, I still couldn't leave someone out here in this impossible forest with fighting going on nearby.

I knelt down and laid my right hand on the ground next to the pair, hoping that simple act would be invitation enough. An unspoken 'let me get you out of here.'

Maybe, instead, 'come with me if you want to live.'

I felt a slight pressure on my hand, I knew that this meant they were touching it, on it. First one pressure, and then a second. A sidelong glance was all I was willing to give, to make sure they were there, before I gently closed my hand to stop them from falling off.

I couldn't bring myself to look too hard. Maybe I wanted to hold out hope, or maybe I just didn't want to change developing any hope at all. I couldn't bring myself to confirm who I'd picked up.

I pushed forward, towards Wunder. Any answers that existed would probably be there. Against all rational thought I had a functional Evangelion under my command, and the others could use the backup.

Trees crunched under my feet as I pushed forward, not quite-running through the dense forest that had somehow replaced the wasteland that had replaced a city. Still, even along the edges, it was obvious there was some areas where they didn't overlap, like two circles in a venn diagram. For as much as the forest was overloaded with life, the wasteland on the eastern edge was completely barren.

But, four kilometers wasn't much time on foot, if those feet were attached to someone eighty meters tall.

Wunder had seen better days. Grounded as she was, that damage wasn't too bad. She'd landed upright. The real problem was the wound where Unit One had torn its way out. Without understanding too much of it, I couldn't see how she'd fly again without Unit One, and that Evangelion was gone.

That didn't mean they could let anyone take the ship. After what had happened it was clear this was not a government that could be trusted. Misato would feel the same way. We'd have to hold the line.

"Ikari to Wunder, I've got survivors, I'm sure you can see me approaching. I'm not sure what's going on, but Unit Zero is still operational... somehow. I need some place safe for my passengers, and some orders. What are we gonna do?"

My words came faster, more frantic than I'd have liked. I felt like I was moving on inertia more than anything else. Momentum from the fight, maybe.

"Ikari, you're alive? Thank god. We're repelling boarders near the bridge. If you can get into the ship and get to engineering, I can have an engineer walk you through a reactor restart. It won't get us back in the air but we'll have guns again. You up to it?"

I recognized that voice. "Clark? What the hell are you doing on the Wunder? I've got survivors, is there a safe place to stash them?"

"Long story, don't have the time to explain. Safest place for them is with you. I wouldn't ask you if we had a choice, but we're all pinned down just holding onto the flight deck. There shouldn't be much resistance elsewhere on the ship."

Well, I did have a gun, so at least I had that going for me. I crouched down and slid myself sideways through the wound that had been torn in the side of the ship when Unit One broke out. It would be as good a place as any to board the ship from, and it was far enough away from the bridge.

​

xxx

​

That there was a catwalk at all to walk on was a gift, that Ayanami had left the access hatch open was a miracle. I could see the two women to my left, in my peripheral vision. Couldn't bring myself to make eye contact, not yet.

The footsteps approaching me told me I wouldn't have the luxury of not knowing for much longer. "Ikari?"

Don't hope. Don't hope. Don't hope.

"Ikari, I know the way."

I couldn't take it anymore, I turned, locked eyes. Red eyes met red. She looked like Ayanami, but she didn't at the same time. Something was... subtly off. She was wearing the familiar white plugsuit. The woman she was carrying was wearing a similar, if far more crude plugsuit.

Something about that should have bothered me, but I refused to let myself think about it. One thing at a time. "Leave her here, they won't hurt her. Lead the way, Ayanami."

"I'm not--"

"Just let me have this, for now, okay!?" I snapped at her. I felt a tear on my cheek. Fuck.

"Okay." She finally said, softly. The voice was a little different, there was more... experience in it. I watched her set the woman down against the bulkhead. She looked like she was sleeping. At least she had that.

I nodded my head towards the hatch and 'Ayanami' stepped through into the access corridor that ran along the belly of the ship. It would probably take us the whole way there if there was any sanity in the design of the ship.

We'd probably end up going down three levels, up five, and then at some point scale the outside of the hull to get where we were going.

I found myself staring at the back of her head as we walked through the darkness, lit only by the few emergency lights. The red lighting cast her in an eerie glow, or more eerie than usual. She was something else. Something new.

Or something very very old.

"So what happened out there?" I surprised myself by being the first to break the silence. I didn't know what else to do, other than maybe cry.

"Ascension. Unification... or Reunification. I don't have a frame of reference. It has been very disorienting. I would have carried on and continued opening the room... but Rei Ayanami wanted to protect you. I protected you." She explained. Her pace was stilted, like she was trying to find the words.

Or trying to frame it in a way I might understand.

"So who are you? Are you Rei Ayanami?" I asked. I felt my voice hitching, felt the lump in my throat. I tried to swallow it down, even as my eyes started to water.

She stopped, turned to face me, and frowned. "I... Do not know. Maybe. We are the same. It depends on your perspective. I feel her desires, her memories, her emotions, her soul. Is that enough?"

I felt a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. Not one of joy, so much as one that appreciated the poetic irony. I could certainly relate to what she was feeling. I'd come to terms with it, or as close as I imagined I ever would.

I wanted Ayanami back.


"Are you Unit One?" She'd over-synced, it was a valid question, right?

"No." Her answer was simple, direct, free of hesitation or ambiguity.

I liked that. "Okay."

"Unit One was made of me."


​

​

 

[Renko]

Jackie?

I just caught up! It was pretty great!

But I saw that there were like additional updated chapters of this story seen from other sites?

When are the rest of the missing chapters going to get here?

image source(s): https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=9268&show=570#msg58472656
https://www.reddit.com/r/ReiAyanami/comments/l2k04m/rinarei/